YouTube is testing a new way that can provide more community support to small content creators, the company announced on Monday. The feature, called ‘Hype’, is being made available to viewers in select regions. Content creators within the criteria will be eligible for this new program. It is just one of the features that is being developed by the video-streaming platform, in addition to a reported sleep timer that could also be introduced.
YouTube Hype feature
The details of the new ‘Hype’ feature were posted on YouTube’s support page by a Community Specialist. As per the post, viewers in Brazil, Turkey, and Taiwan can now ‘Hype’ a video, in addition to liking it, which will boost its rankings amongst other videos published in the last seven days. The more hyped a video is, the higher it will be ranked, as per the company.
At present, viewers can like and share videos they love which helps creators. Moreover, they can also utilise options such as Super Chat and Super Stickers to gain a monetary benefit apart from the ad revenue.
YouTube says the ‘Hype’-based rankings will appear under the Explore tab. This move is said to help small content creators receive greater 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 of their videos must comply with YouTube’s Community Guidelines. This initiative is still only in the test phase and it remains unknown if it will be rolled out to more content creators in the future.
Notes on YouTube
On June 17, YouTube announced that it would enable users to post comments below videos to provide easy-to-understand context. The video-streaming platform is introducing it as an experimental feature in the English language to users in the US.
Users will find a new Add note option below the video, as per YouTube. They can use the textbox to provide more context and then hit Send to publish the note. YouTube claims the published note will exclude the creator’s name.