YouTube, a popular video streaming platform which is owned by Google is reportedly testing a new feature which is expected to be called ‘Hype’. The new feature aims to boost visibility for small creators on the platform. This new experimental feature is available in select countries at the moment, and it will offer the viewers a way to promote their favourite videos.
Here is everything you need to know about the ‘Hype feature’ for YouTube and how it functions.
Hype Feature: What is it?
The Hype feature will enable the viewers to ‘hype’ videos which will help in increasing the chances of videos appearing along with the other hyped content for the week. This is said to be part of YouTube's ongoing effort to support smaller content creators and provide them with more visibility on the platform.
The announcement of this feature has been titled ‘New way for viewers to support their favourite creators’, reflecting its community-centric approach.
How will ‘Hype’ feature work?
As per the reports, Hype operates just like YouTube’s existing Like and Share features. When a video is hyped by a viewer, it does not influence YouTube’s reach and discovery algorithms, instead, it highlights the video in a new way.
Hyped videos will appear in the ‘Explore’ section of YouTube, providing a separate spotlight from the usual trending section. majorly, only videos which are published within the last seven days will be eligible for hype, making sure that the feature promotes fresh content on a regular break.
Target audience and eligibility for the new Hype feature
The Hype feature has been designed to help new and smaller creators to get discovered by new audiences. The new feature has been tested with a subset of YouTube Partner Program creators who have less than 500,000 subscribers and further adhere to the community guidelines.
This focus on smaller channels further aims at levelling the playing field and giving emerging creators a better chance to grow their audience.Availability
At present, the Hype feature on YouTube is being tested in Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan, by the time of writing. YouTube has not yet disclosed if the new feature will be a paid service in the future.
The company has been collecting feedback from initial markets to determine the feature which will be expanded to other regions.
Prospects and additional features
YouTube’s Hype feature is part of a broader strategy for enhancing the user's engagement and further provides more context to the videos which are published on the platform.
Recently, YouTube has also been experimenting with a new feature for enabling users to add contextual notes to videos, which might clarify the content for viewers.
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