YouTube originally announced mobile live streaming back in mid-2016, but so far it had only made the feature available in limited form to a select group of partners. Today the company is expanding its reach to anyone with more than 10,000 subscribers ahead of a full rollout later in 2017.

The company already supports live streaming from a computer but it has notably lagged behind Facebook and Twitter in this space. Facebook Live in particular has grown exponentially. Although arriving a bit late to the party, YouTube is likely hoping influential content creators will drive people to its platform.

Broadcasters can set a custom title, enable or disable live chat, and choose to send a notification to all of their subscribers. You can broadcast in portrait or landscape and messages will appear on your screen as fast-moving bubbles. In addition, there are some new revenue opportunities with the introduction of Super Chat, which will allow users to highlight their messages for a fee. These messages are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours.

Live videos will have all the same features as regular YouTube videos --- they can be searched for, found via recommendations or playlists, and protected from unauthorized use.