YouTube communities launched alongside ‘Hype’ button to incentivize creators
YouTube has announced a new feature called Communities that’s designed to increase engagement on the video streaming platform. Once enabled, users will be able to post in a YouTube Community and receive responses from other users. The company said it’s also rolling out a new “Hype” button — a feature it’s been in the works for more than a year — that will boost emerging creators on the platform by helping more viewers discover their channels via a platform-wide leaderboard that shows the most hyped videos on YouTube.
YouTube Communities Announced
The new YouTube Communities feature was announced on Wednesday and will slowly roll out to select channels on the platform before becoming broadly available next year, the company said. The feature adds the ability to interact with the channel owner by posting messages in a community, while other users can also respond and reply to posts.
YouTube Communities to be rolled out widely in 2025
Photo credit: YouTube
Until now, users have only been able to post comments in channels, forcing creators to turn to platforms like Facebook, Discord or Telegram to communicate with their subscribers. The forum-like YouTube Communities feature could allow the service to keep users engaged on its own platform.
The feature isn’t enabled by default, meaning channel owners will need to enable it themselves. It’s also worth noting that channel owners will need to moderate their communities for inappropriate content, via the new Community Hub tool, which is worth keeping in mind.
YouTube Hype Button: How It Works
YouTube explained that the new Hype button has been created with upcoming creators in mind, as they sometimes find it difficult to reach new viewers even if they have a loyal fan base. If a channel has less than 5 lakh subscribers, viewers can ‘hype’ it, which has a bigger impact than sharing or liking the video on YouTube.
According to YouTube, when a viewer taps the new button, it will generate hype and move up a leaderboard that shows the most hyped videos of the week. Users can check the latest charts to see which channels have received the most hype.
The new feature is a bit complicated, though: You can only hype a video from a channel with fewer than 5 lakh followers, for up to seven days after the video is published. Viewers can hype videos three times per week, but the company is considering offering additional hype for purchase, so creators can monetize their content.
The platform says that creators with lower subscriber points will get a “small creator bonus,” which is essentially a score multiplier, to level the playing field in the leaderboard. Interestingly, YouTube states that promoting a video will not affect search results or video recommendations on the platform.
