YouTube Jumps To Top Of App Store After Increased Availability Of Live Feature

Earlier in April, YouTube announced that the live feature on its mobile would become available to anyone with at least 1,000 subscribers. The feature had previously been limited to creators with at least 10,000 subscribers, so the update has opened up YouTube’s mobile live offering to a large batch of potential users.

Based on recent movement on the App Store charts, those users are very excited about the new tool at their disposal. After the update went live, YouTube became the top free app on iTunes. At the time of this post, it sits in the #2 position, ahead of competitors Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.

YouTube first added live streaming to its mobile app during VidCon in 2016, but it initially limited the feature to a select group of top-of-the-line creators, including The Young Turks and Alex Wassabi. In February 2017, the video site granted mobile live access to channels with five-digit subscriber sums, before ultimately settling on the current requirement.

The jump to the top of iTunes’ free app chart put YouTube in a position it had not held since December 2015, according to TechCrunch. The video site’s app didn’t see as much movement on the Google Play charts, though it’s worth noting that YouTube comes pre-installed on Android devices.

The mobile live industry is extremely hot right now, and YouTube’s latest uptick shows it will be able to snag a piece of that pie. The video site has not revealed when — if at all — it plans to let all of its users access the trendy new feature, regardless of subscriber count.