YouTube starts testing Q&A stickers for Shorts on mobile

SAN FRANCISCO: As promised, Google-owned YouTube has started testing Q&A stickers for Shorts on mobile.

"To make it even easier for Shorts creators to build communities with their audiences, we’re experimenting with stickers that allow creators to ask questions of their viewers," the company said on the 'YouTube test features and experiments' page.

Creator's questions can be customised and viewers can reply via comments.

"Audience responses are visible to other viewers who can see them when reading comments posted on the Short where the sticker was used," the platform said.

This feature is currently rolling out to a small percentage of creators.

While the viewers will be able to see the stickers across all devices, they will not be able to tap on those stickers on a desktop or TV.

The company had first announced this feature earlier this month and said that it would soon roll out the feature.

Meanwhile, the video-sharing platform has announced that it is testing a new, automatic way to identify key concepts covered in academic learning videos and surface more information about these concepts in the form of images and short text snippets in real-time -- directly on the video’s watch page.

"Creators have the option to opt-out of ‘Key Concepts’ at the video level in YouTube Studio (on Desktop go to Content > Details [for a particular video] > Select ‘Show More’ > Uncheck 'Allow automatic concepts')," the company said.

For now, this is being tested on a small set of English-language videos related to educational topics taught in schools.

"The experiment will take place on mobile only, for a limited number of people watching YouTube," it added.