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YouTube Community is a social soapbox for the most popular kids in school

YouTube has announced the launch of new Community pages that will enable content creators to share more than just video uploads with subscribers.

The feature will act more like a Facebook profile page and make it easier for the most popular channels to share text, images, gifs and live video updates.

The Google-owed sharing behemoth says it’ll provide ‘easier’ and ‘lightweight’ ways for users to engage with fans.

Additionally, YouTube itself may benefit as creators won’t have to decamp to other sources like Facebook and Twitter in order to share with fans.

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In a post on the YouTube blog the company wrote: “The brand new Community tab on your YouTube channel gives you a new, simple way to engage with your viewers and express yourself beyond video. Now you can do things like text, live videos, images, animated GIFs and more, giving you easier, lightweight ways to engage with your fans more often in between uploads, in real time. Viewers will be able to see your posts in the Subscriptions feed on their phones. They can also opt into getting a notification anytime you post.”

As of today, select content creators can test the in-beta feature, with more channels being added in due course.

The pages with Community access from day one include John & Hank Green, AsapSCIENCE, The Game Theorists, Karmin, The Key of Awesome, The Kloons, Lilly Singh, Peter Hollens, Rosianna Halse Rojas, Sam Tsui, Threadbanger, and VSauce3.

The launch makes sense for YouTube given Facebook and Twitter are both making big pushes into live video streaming.

Video: Apple iOS 10 hands-on

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