YouTube now lets users "hype" videos in select geographies

YouTube has been testing new features, like adding Shorts to Smart Downloads, to improve user and creator experience on the platform for some time now. In the same vein, the company recently announced it has rolled out a “Hype” feature in select geographies (via 9to5Google). The feature, which is available in Brazil, Taiwan, and Turkey, helps “smaller creators receive support from the community and also be discovered by new audiences.”

YouTube notes that Hype is similar to the existing Like and Share functionalities. That said, it is only available to a “subset of YouTube Partner Program content creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.”  There are also a few limitations to how subscribers can use this feature. 

For one, users can only Hype a video posted in the last seven days. Another thing to note is that hyped videos are ranked on the Explore page but not in the Trending section. Hypes will also not be used as an indicator for the platform’s search and discovery algorithms. So, while hyped videos can increase the creator’s visibility through the Explore page, they will not directly affect YouTube’s broader search and discovery mechanisms that push deserving videos to the top.

YouTube has yet to announce further details about this feature, like whether users need to pay to Hype a video or if it’s only available to YouTube Premium subscribers. Although plans for the wider rollout of this feature are currently unknown, YouTube stated it would continue to test and collect feedback to determine if the functionality can be made available in other geographies or to different subsets of creators at a later point.