YouTube Tests New Community Notes Feed in the Mobile App

YouTube’s looking to better incorporate its text-based social engagement element, with a new Community Posts feed for channels in the mobile app.

As explained by YouTube:

“We’ve heard that YouTube users are looking for more ways to find Community posts from creators, so we’re experimenting with a “posts-only” feed on the Home tab on mobile devices. If you’re in the experiment, you may see a “View all” button on single Community posts on Home, which you can tap to view more posts from channels you’ve engaged with in the past or posts that we think you may like.”

So it’s essentially building a Twitter-like text update feed into YouTube, with posts from channels that you follow, and channels you might like, integrated into a dedicated updates stream.

Which could be an interesting engagement element, and another way for channel managers to keep their audience informed of supplemental updates, aside from just their uploads.

YouTube’s been working to make Community Posts a bigger part of community engagement, by adding polls, quizzes (available on Android, coming to iOS soon), disappearing updates, and more. YouTube also lowered the thresholds for qualification for Community Notes back in May, with all channel managers now able to use the feature.

The new dedicated notes tab adds another consideration, which could make it a more valuable means of outreach and awareness in the app.  

YouTube says that it’s testing its new Community Notes mobile feed with “a small group of users” on both Android and iOS.