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YouTube's got another new way to support your favorite creator (and also YouTube, the soulless machine)
Super Thanks, our lord and savior Tube of You!
Independent content creators have plenty of avenues to monetize their work. YouTube, home to many of those creators' videos, has been pushing their fans to contribute gifts during livestreams with Super Chats and Super Stickers. Now, it's opening up a way for them to do the same for video-on-demand with Super Thanks.
Instagram has announced new features that are intended to enhance the experiences for the 500 million daily active users of its Stories feature — one of these features is available right now while the other may take some time and adjustment to get used to. The social media platform is also building a new way for users to browse and buy the clothes their favorite influencers are wearing.
When a company has the reputation that Facebook has, it's unsurprising that it will want to point to anything positive it does when the opportunity arises. Today, the company has announced that its fundraising tools have been responsible for more the $1 billion making its way to various charitable causes.
One of YouTube's many problems is video monetization. With the site changing its discovery algorithms constantly, many major creators have turned to services like Patreon to ensure a steady source of income. Now YouTube has decided to shut down its Fan Funding feature, which allowed users to donate to channels with it turned on.
Most of Google's apps offer ways for us to enhance the quality of our own lives, whether it's through improved communication, managing documents, or just browsing the web through Chrome. One Today, an Android app the company launched over a year ago, turns this around by empowering us to actively help others instead. The core idea here is to donate a dollar a day to a different charity (today's is an adopt an afternoon lesson program through Develop Africa), but there's no reason to stop there. The more generous among us (or those with extra money) can choose to donate elsewhere, and with the latest app update, there's a new "Pay It Forward" option so that people can provide funds for others to allocate.
YouTube thrives off the videos produced by independent content creators all over the world, and while it compensates many of them through ads, that money is hardly enough to make a living off of in most cases. Earlier this summer Google said that producers would soon have the option to request donations right on their YouTube pages. The feature's live now, so here's a look at how it works.