Hi,

Last week YouTube introduced one of their most powerful tools yet - the Collaborator feature. It’s somewhat of an ode to Instagram’s collaborator feature, giving users the ability to crosspost to multiple channels in an upload.

It looks like it can potentially be super beneficial for artists and creators building their channels.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

The collaborator feature was announced on YouTube’s blog last week and has quickly been used by early adopters.

The feature essentially allows a creator to crosspost their upload with up to five other channels. When uploading a video, you can go to the video’s Advanced settings to look for the Collaboration feature.

You can then search for the channels you want to invite or generate a link that you can send to the other parties. Similiar to Instagram, the collaborators have to accept the request - it doesn’t just appear automatically.

The ability to send a direct link is a nice touch to make the process easier.

Here’s how the feature appears in action:

From a channel level - it looks like this

Once you click on the channel name, it generates a pop up like this:

Once accepted, the video then appears in the subscriptions feed of the collaborator’s audience and may be recommended to them to increase discoverability. Users can also feature their collaborated videos on a “Shelf” on their channel homepage.

It appears to essentially be a visibility and an algorithmic play - the collaborator’s channel gets more exposure and the ability to appear in the subscriptions feed and get recommended can potentially impact how the video moves in the algorithm.

It’s a brilliant feature and was a long time coming (my personal YouTube prayers have finally been answered). Here’s how I can see it affecting different situations.

1) Artists

The new feature becomes a great opportunity for artists to send collab requests to featured artists on their songs. It’s another tool to engage with those fans and truthfully, may even benefit the invited collaborator more (depending on audience size) because they’re now able to get visibility they previously wouldn’t and if the original channel is bigger than theirs, they’re getting increased exposure.

2) Brand partnerships

The same way creators do collab posts on Instagram with brands and sponsorships, I imagine this will start to take form on YouTube. Brand who are sponsoring a video from a creator will likely now include the Collaborator request in their list of asks.

Whereas previously it may have just been product placement in the video and a link in the description, now the brand (or sponsor) has an opportunity to get more visibility for their channel.

The collabator feature also allows the original channel to share video analytics with the invited channel(s). I could see this being useful for brand partners looking to gauge video performance on a video they’re sponsoring.

3) Media channels

As seen in the above example, media platforms can now utilize this feature with guests on their show. NPR did a collaborator invite with Ed Sheeran to promote his new appearance on Tiny Desk.

As these big media platforms release content featuring artists (for example: Joe Budden Podcast, NPR, A Million Dollaz Worth of Game, etc) - they could now request the talent to accept collaborator invites so it hits the talent channels for wider reach.

4) Features I’d love to see

In the spirit of this new feature, here’s a few other features I’d love to see:

• YouTube’s version of Instagram collab posts - functionality so that when publishing a video, you can directly hit the subscribers of another channel

• Sharing directly to IG stories - the ability to share videos from YouTube natively to Instagram stories and having those IG story views count toward the YouTube video

• Cleaner merch integration - instead of a merch “shelf” underneath the video, having a cleaner and more visible way of displaying products

• Embedded player in text messages - when texting a YouTube link to a friend using an iPhone or Android, having a snippet of the video embed in the text message and play

• Publish directly from YouTube (long form) to social - the ability to select time stamps and video formatting (wide or vertical), cut snippets, and publish directly to social

• YouTube as a workspace

YouTube as a workspace

While YouTube is about publishing videos and sort of the “end result” in the content distribution pipeline (since it’s being uploaded), what happens to all of the work beforehand?

I could see YouTube buying a company like frame.io and integrating a video editing workspace into its platform - what if you could edit, share feedback, finalize, and publish a video all in one place?

Frame.io has the ability to leave comments on videos for feedback, test different formats, and more as a workspace solution for video projects.

YouTube acquiring a platform like this (or building its own) could help streamline the video creation process and continue to give the company value and leverage.

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

 1) Emergent - my cousin actually introduced me to this one! It’s similiar to Lovable, a platform that can be used for building web applications with AI but Emergent has more integrations. For example, it recently just integrated with Claude Sonnet 4.5 More info HERE