YouTube Introduces New Profile Ring Indicators for Live and Stories

How do you know when your favorite YouTuber is going live or has a new story? With the new profile ring indicators by YouTube, knowing it gets simpler. Now, you can take a look at the profile and tell the current status of a blogger by the ring around it. 

How do you tell? There are three types of ring indicators around the profile picture of any YouTube user, indicating the current status of the profile. If there is a red ring about it with the word LIVE under it, it means exactly what it says on the tin: the user is live now, and you can watch the LiveStream by simply tapping the icon. The red ring indicates that the user has published a story that you haven’t seen yet. If there are some active stories but you have already seen them, the ring turns gray. In both cases, as you tap the icon, you go straight to the stories. No ring shows there are no stories to see and no streams currently, so a tap will redirect you to the user’s channel.

These rings have already been embraced by various media, for example, Instagram. But a good idea soon becomes a ubiquitous practice. Given that YouTube is planning to incorporate more social media elements to provide a better experience to its users, Instagram is quite good an example to follow. 

Ring indicators are a logical development to what YouTube builds now. Previous moves towards that experience included introduction of reactions and community features. With Shorts, YouTube reacted to the success of TikTok and Reels. Now it also slowly embraces such a cultural layer as podcasting. It may result in YouTube offering a global media experience that embraces lots of spheres, from education to entertainment, making it easy to start a blog or to watch it just for fun.

Do you like these ring indicators? Do you find it easy to tell by an indicator what’s the status of the channel? Tell us about your impression in the comments!