Circles drawn round “Top Fans”

A new feature for YouTube that went into beta test earlier this year has now been unleashed but you have to be pretty popular to enjoy it. The “Top Fans” function is a set of tools to help you see which other YouTube members are watching and interacting with your videos.

It includes a fans table that shows a ranking of your viewers, updated daily. You can sort the table by engagement level (comments, likes, and so on) or by number of subscribers. If you’ve connected your channel to Google+, you can also add viewers into circles and send them a message via Google+.

Google are of course, irritatingly keen to make you use G+ so they’re pushing for you to create Circles with your Top Fans and will be prompting your top fans to follow you on Google+ when they watch your videos.

You can create a ticker of their latest engagement with your videos, see what other videos and channels they’re watching, and communicate via Google+ to ask a question, start a conversation, share photos, or upload a private video for them.

Unfortunately you need at least five thousand subscribers to get access to these features; whilst that’s a mere day’s work for some YouTubers, it’s a distant dream for many. But if you’ve hit that requirement, take a look at your new “Community” tab.