If you've been active on YouTube in recent years, you've likely noticed creators frequently urging viewers to subscribe to their channels, which is understandable considering the effort they put into producing content for the platform. In a recent experiment, YouTube is emphasising these statements to action with a feature that causes the ‘Subscribe’ button to glow in sync with the creator's request.
According to a report by 9To5Google, YouTube is testing a new feature that automatically makes the ‘Subscribe’ button glow whenever a video mentions the word ‘subscribe’.
Also read: Google will add new vertical live feed on YouTube for mobile viewers
Those who witnessed the test indicate that it occurred across a wide range of videos, suggesting that the process is entirely automated by the platform itself.
Also read: YouTube Playables will let you play games, just like in Netflix app
For a brief period, the glowing animation gives a splash of colour to the button, emphasising it subtly but visibly, according to the report.
In order to emphasise the request to subscribe, creators frequently play animations within the video itself, but this new platform-level addition might make it much simpler to do so. So far, it appears that this just functions on desktops as there is no indication that it works on mobile or TV apps.
Last week, Google started testing a new vertical live feed on the video sharing platform YouTube for mobile viewers. This new vertical live experience includes a scrollable live stream feed and easily accessible fan funding features. During this new experiment, creators can stream vertically, either on mobile devices with the YouTube app or through desktop streaming software, and their vertical streams will be visible to eligible viewers browsing Shorts on the YouTube app.
Also, Google had begun testing a new experience on YouTube called ‘Playables’. Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices. Users who are part of this experiment will see a section on YouTube called ‘Playables’ that will appear alongside other content on the home feed.