With those new tools have come some feedback on our APIs. Particularly, that there aren’t enough of them. So much is happening on YouTube live streams -- chatting, fan funding, sponsoring -- but there’s no good way to get the data out and into the types of apps that streamers want, like on-screen overlays, chat moderation bots and more.
Well well, what have we here? A whole bunch of new additions to the Live Streaming API, getting you access to all those great chat messages, fan funding alerts and new sponsor messages!
- Fan Funding events, which occur when a user makes a one-time voluntary payment to support a creator.
- Live Chat events, which allow you to read the content of a YouTube live chat in real time, as well as adding new chat messages on behalf of the authenticated channel.
- Live Chat bans, which enable the automated application of chat “time-outs” and “bans.”
- Sponsors, which allows access to a list of YouTube users that are sponsoring the channel. A sponsor provides recurring monetary support to a creator and receives special benefits.
In addition, we’ve closed a small gap in the LiveBroadcasts API by adding the ability to retrieve and modify the LiveBroadcast object for a channel’s “Stream now” stream.
As part of the development process we gave early access to a few folks, and we’re excited to show off some great integrations that launch today:
- Using our new Sponsorships feature? Discord will let you offer your sponsors access to private voice and text servers.
- Add live chat, new sponsors and new fan funding announcements to an overlay with the latest beta of Gameshow.
- Looking for some help with moderating and managing your live chat? Try out Nightbot, a chat bot that can perform a variety of moderating tasks specifically designed to create a more efficient and friendly environment for your community.
- Show off your live chat with an overlay in XSplit Broadcaster using their new YouTube Live Chat plugin.
We’ve also spotted some libraries and sample code on Github that might help get you started, including this chat library in Go and this one in Python.
We hope these new APIs can bring whole new categories of tools to the creator community. We’re excited to see what you build!
Marc Chambers, Developer Relations, recently watched ”ArmA 3| Episode 1|Pilot the CH53 E SS.”