YouTube did test out something similar with its timed comments feature (which is still in beta), and now the company has announced a new feature that they’re testing out in the form of timed reactions. It is basically the same as timed comments, except that for users who don’t want to leave comments, they can just leave a reaction in the form of an emoji instead.
This reactions feature is similar to what Facebook has done for its platform, allowing users to react to a post without words in case they don’t really know what to say. According to YouTube, “If you’re watching a video that is part of this experiment, you can react and see crowd reactions by opening the comment section of the video and tapping into the reaction panel.”
Reactions will be anonymous which means that no one knows that it’s you who left an emoji reaction at that point in a video, but it will be helpful for those who are watching a video and might want to jump to the more exciting parts quickly and easily.