YouTube's “hype” feature, which allows fans to help their favorite creators to be discovered, is rolling out globally, the company announced Tuesday. This feature, first introduced in 2024 at the Google's Made On YouTube event (a dedicated button that appears under the existing “Like” button) will be available for videos from creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.
This feature is currently available in 39 countries, including the US, UK, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and India.
Viewers have the opportunity to hype up to three videos a week for their favorite creators. This will give you video points. This will help YouTube users gain traction with new ranked leaderboards that they can find in the Explore menu. To make the hype fair, YouTube says it gives a big boost to smaller creators. This means that if the creator has fewer subscribers, fans will get a bigger bonus when the video is hyped.
Image credits: YouTube
Videos that receive this fan boost will also display “hyped” badges, and users can also filter their home feeds on YouTube to only view videos in the new “hyped” category. When the video they're hyping is approaching the leaderboard, YouTube notifies users who helped with it. Dedicated fans can show support by winning new “hype star” badges each month.
YouTube said it featured the hype because it saw passionate fans wanting to be part of the creator's success story. However, this addition will allow YouTube to offer a new revenue stream. The company says it plans to buy more “hype” for fans to increase their favorite videos in the future.
Soon, YouTube is also developing a leaderboard for hype for certain interests such as games and styles, and how fans can share that they have just hyped the video.
Creators can track hype and hype points with the YouTube Studio Mobile app, view video analysis of new hype cards and summarise them in weekly data stories.
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