YouTube is testing a new way that can provide more community support for small content creators, the company announced Monday. A feature called ‘Hype’ is available to viewers in select regions. Content creators within the criteria will be eligible for this new program. It’s just one of the features being developed by the video-streaming platform, with a reported sleep timer that could also be introduced.
YouTube Hype feature
Details of the new ‘Hype’ feature have been posted by a community expert on the YouTube support page. According to the post, viewers in Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan can now ‘Hype’ the video in addition to liking it, which will improve its ranking among other videos published in the last seven days. The more hyped a video is, the higher it will rank, according to the company.
Currently, viewers can like and share videos they like, which helps creators. Moreover, they can also use features like Super Chat and Super Stickers to gain monetary benefits apart from ad revenue.
YouTube says rankings based on ‘Hype’ will appear below Investigate tab. The move is said to help small content creators gain more community support and reach a wider audience.
However, there is a catch. According to the video-streaming platform, only YouTube Partner Program creators with less than 500,000 subscribers are eligible for the ‘Hype’ program. Furthermore, all their videos must comply with the YouTube Community Guidelines. This initiative is still only in the test phase and it remains unknown whether it will be available to more content creators in the future.
Notes on YouTube
On June 17, YouTube announced that it will allow users to post comments below videos to provide easy-to-understand context. The video-streaming platform is introducing it as an experimental feature in English to users in the US.
Users will find a new Add Note option below the video, according to YouTube. I can use a text box to provide more context and then hit send to post the note. YouTube claims that the published note will not include the creator’s name.
