Over the years, YouTube has grown from being a simple video streaming service to a platform hosting creators and their communities. Although the service has tried to make things personal with channel URLs, it is now taking things a step further with unique handles for every channel, giving creators and viewers a new way to interact with each other. In the future, handles will be displayed on channel pages and on YouTube Shorts.

This will not only make it easier for viewers to identify creators but will also make it easier to communicate across all of YouTube's social forums, like comments, community posts, and more. Furthermore, creators will be able to easily tag each other in video titles and video descriptions. This feature will start rolling out over the next month. For some creators, personalized channel URLs will automatically become their handle. But this can be changed. Of course, since these handles are unique, if one is taken, a channel will have to choose something else. YouTube has not stated a particular order for the rollout but did state that there are several factors involved that have to do with presence, subscriber count, and channel activity.

YouTube states that if creators don't choose their handle by November 14, they will be assigned one based on their channel name. As mentioned prior, this can always be changed. As the rollout occurs, creators will be notified via email or YouTube Studio when it is their turn to choose a unique handle. Those that are verified shouldn't be worried about losing their status once they add a handle. YouTube does warn that changing the channel name will cause verification to be lost, but this has always been the case. So, for the time being, creators will need to be patient and hope that another creator won't take their preferred handle. In addition to this new rollout, YouTube has also been experimenting with charging for 4K quality videos, beefing up its educational segment, and giving YouTube Shorts creators a new and steady way to earn income.

Source: YouTube