YouTube announces mobile live broadcasting coming 'soon' for everyone

Though the likes of Periscope and Facebook Live are the talk of the town right now in mobile live video broadcasting, YouTube is now ready to get into the game. Taking to the YouTube Creator blog, Google has announced that live broadcasts will be coming to the YouTube app "soon" and that it'll be "more reliable than anything else out there."

Though YouTube makes the point that its service offered live streaming for events since 2011, it has sorely lacked the latest hot feature of direct broadcast from your phone — the only way to go live to YouTube from your phone directly was to have one of the few that supported the feature, namely recent Sony and Samsung phones.

With this change, everyone with the YouTube app will be able to start broadcasting live to millions of people (well, at least potentially) with no extra strings attached. The thought of "better late than never" certainly applies here, but with Facebook Live already showing huge growth in such a short period, you have to wonder how YouTube will catch back up and win over users.

Andrew Martonik

Andrew was an Executive Editor, U.S. at Android Central between 2012 and 2020.