While Amazon-owned Twitch has been struggling a bit amid recent controversial changes to its platform, YouTube is capitalizing on the shake-up. This week, YouTube announced that it is testing Membership Gifting, a feature similar to what Twitch offers.
Detailed in a community post, Membership Gifting is available as of today on YouTube but only in a limited capacity. YouTube explains that a “small group” of creators will get access to the feature to start, with the feature expanding over the coming months. Creators can flag their interest in the feature to YouTube through a form.
What is Membership Gifting on YouTube? Channel members have the ability to buy up to 20 “gift” memberships to other viewers on a livestream, and those who receive the gift get one month of access to loyalty badges, custom emoji, and other channel membership perks. Gifts are free to those who receive them, and creators get paid as they would with a traditional channel membership.
For the time being, Membership Gifting is only available on the desktop website experience for YouTube users, and users also have to opt in to be eligible for gifts. YouTube automatically distributes gift memberships based on loyal, active viewers. Existing channel members can’t accept a gift either.
Twitch offers similar functionality through Gift Subscriptions. These can be given to specific viewers or at random for up to 100 viewers.
More on YouTube:
- How to limit certain types of ads on YouTube
- YouTube Shorts starts running ads as daily views pass 30 billion on the TikTok competitor
- YouTube fully rolls out Super Thanks, here’s how to enable it for your channel
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