YouTube has announced a new feature called Communities that is designed to increase engagement on the video streaming platform. Once it is enabled, users will be able to post in a YouTube Community and receive responses from other users. The company also says that is rolling out a new ‘Hype’ button — a feature that has been in the works for over a year — that will boost emerging creators on the platform by allowing more viewers to discover their channels via a platform-wide leaderboard that shows the most-hyped videos on YouTube.
The new YouTube Communities feature was announced on Wednesday and will slowly roll out to select channels on the platform, before becoming widely available next yar, according to the company. The feature adds the ability to interact with the owner of the channel by posting in a community, while other users can also react and respond to posts.
YouTube Communities will roll out widely in 2025
Photo Credit: YouTube
Until now, users could only post comments in channels, forcing creators to take to platforms like Facebook, Discord or Telegram to interact with their subscribers. The forum-like YouTube Communities feature might allow the service to keep users engaged on its own platform.
The feature won’t be enabled by default, which means that 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 explained that the new Hype button has been created with emerging creators in mind, as they can sometimes find it difficult to reach new viewers, even if they have a loyal fanbase. If a channel has less than 5 lakh subscribers, viewers will be able to “hype” it, which has a greater impact than sharing the video or liking it on YouTube.
According to YouTube, when a viewer taps the new button, it will accumulate hype and start to rise up a leaderboard that shows the most hyped videos of the week. Users can view the latest charts in order to see which channels have received the most hype.
However, the new feature is a little complicated — you can only hype a video from a channel that has less than 5 lakh followers, for up to seven days after the video was published. Viewers can hype videos three times a week, but the company is looking into offering additional hypes for purchase to help creators monetise their content.
The platform says that creators with lower subscriber points will receive a “small creator bonus” which is essentially a score multiplier. in order to make the leaderboard a level playing field. Interestingly, YouTube states that hyping a video won’t impact search results and video recommendations on the platform.
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