YouTube tests letting viewers ‘Hype’ a video

YouTube is testing a “Hype” feature that lets viewers boost the likelihood of a video “appearing in the rankings with other hyped videos that week.”

In announcing this experiment, YouTube equates “Hype” to the existing Like and Share functionality.

There are notable constraints to this capability, starting with how “Hypes are not used as an indicator for YouTube’s search and discovery system” (translated).

You can only Hype a video that was published in the last seven days, while the experiment is “limited to a subset of YouTube Partner Program content creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.” In fact, Hype is meant to specifically “help smaller creators receive support from the community and also be discovered by new audiences.” 

Instead, hyped videos appear in a “Explore” section, which might be referring to the Home feed, that’s separate from the Trending feed. 

Hype is currently being tested in Brazil, Taiwan, and Turkey. We’ve reached out to YouTube for more details, including whether “Hypes” are a paid action like Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks. If so, it could drive a virtuous cycle in terms of boosting reach, and monetarily supporting Creators (and YouTube).

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