YouTube has done away with the requirement of at least 100 followers to stream live videos on the Web. Anyone with a verified YouTube account in good standing can now enjoy the latest change in the service.
There is some good news for people who like to stream live videos on YouTube. This access was granted only to a small number of accounts, which had a minimum following. After Thursday's announcement, YouTube is letting anyone with a verified account in good standing to stream live videos to the Web.
The requirement of 100 subscribers was brought down from 1000 followers in May. Relaxing the restriction based on the number of followers will grant access to a larger number of accounts to enjoy the feature, provided they are verified and in good standing.
According to YouTube, an account with good standing must have no community guidelines or copyright infractions and should not have any videos blocked by the site's own content ID in the last six months. The status of your account can be checked here. If the account is not verified, users can do it right away by requesting a verification code and entering it on the site to verify the account.
In addition to streaming live sports, news, music and games, users can also stream a Google+ Hangout on Air on YouTube. This new feature will give a better shot at connecting with fans and attracting more participants.
"To give you even more ways to connect with fans, you can now launch a Google+ Hangout on Air directly from the YouTube Live events manager," Satyajeet Salgar, product manager, and Tim James, software engineer, wrote in the company's blog. "This gives you a simple way to reach your fans live and is the ideal way to invite participants to join your show."
Google-owned YouTube has an incredible statistics report, with more than 1 billion unique visitors each month and daily subscriptions by new users are up by four times since last year. The latest expansion poses a bigger challenge to other companies such as Ustream, Brightcove and Livestream.
YouTube said that the feature is currently being rolled out to all users and the changes will take place in the next few weeks.
