YouTube’s ‘Hype’ feature that boosts smaller creators launches globally | TechCrunch

YouTube’s “Hype” feature, which allows fans to help their favorite creators get discovered, is rolling out globally, the company announced Tuesday. First introduced at Google’s Made on YouTube event in 2024, the feature — a dedicated button that appears below the existing “like” button — will become available on videos from creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.

The feature is now available across 39 countries, including the U.S., U.K., Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and India.

Viewers have the opportunity to hype up to three videos per week for a favorite creator. This gives the video points, which helps it gain traction on a new, ranked leaderboard that YouTube users can find in the Explore menu. To make hyping fair, YouTube says it will give smaller creators a bigger boost. That means if a creator has fewer subscribers, they’ll get a bigger bonus when fans hype their video.

Videos that have received this fan boost will display a “hyped” badge, and users can also filter their Home feed on YouTube to see only videos with the new “hyped” category. When a video they’ve hyped is getting close to the leaderboard, YouTube will notify the users who helped hype it. Dedicated fans can show their support by earning a new “hype star” badge every month, as well.

YouTube said it introduced Hype because it saw that passionate fans wanted to be a part of a creator’s success story. However, the addition will also offer YouTube a new revenue stream as the company said it plans to let fans purchase more “hypes” to help boost their favorite videos in the future.

In the near term, YouTube is also developing hype leaderboards for specific interests, like gaming and style, and a way for fans to share that they’ve just hyped a video.

Creators can track their hypes and hype points in the YouTube Studio mobile app, and they can check their video analytics for a new Hype card and recap in their weekly data stories.