YouTube starts testing a new way for viewers to support their favorite creators

It’s not often that streaming services like YouTube and Twitch release new tools that are specifically designed to help smaller creators gain new followers. The new feature launched this week by YouTube introduces a new way for users to support their favorite creators.

Unlike many of the similar features released by YouTube in the past, this one only addressed to smaller creators. In addition to functions such as “Like” and “Share,” YouTube viewers will now have another feature at their disposal: Hype.

According to YouTube, the more viewers hype a video, the greater the chance of it appearing in the rankings with other hyped videos. The streaming service says that the ranking will appear in the “Explore” section, so it won’t be listed in the “Trending” section.

Apparently, the new “hype” feature isn’t used as an indicator for YouTube’s search and discovery system. More importantly, this was launched as an experiment, so not everyone will have access to it.

Only lucky viewers in Brazil, Turkey and Taiwan can take advantage of the “hype” feature and use on videos posted in the last seven days. One other thing worth mentioning is that eligibility for the experiments is limited to a subset of YouTube Partner Program content creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.

Obviously, the videos produced must meet YouTube’s community guidelines, otherwise “hyping” them won’t have any effect when it comes to rankings. The new feature will be tested in the coming weeks and might change based on the feedback received from YouTube viewers.

Generally speaking, the ability to “hype” a video to support your favorite creator is very nice, especially if you’re a hardcore fan. Personally, I believe that lowering the number of subscribers a creator must have to be eligible for the “hype” function will truly help smaller content creators.