Jay Leonard
Change is always not preferred and if it is affecting networks guarded by communities then you are surely playing with fire. Right now Google, the search giant is in the midst of such an act after it went ahead and decided to clean up the YouTube comments. A much required move at a time when one school of thought is vouching to kill the anonymity within the Internet.
The role out and features of the commenting system
Google made its intentions clear with the new development that YouTube would be powered with Google Plus commenting system by the end of September, 2013. However, it rolled out the changes after testing the new developments on the channel discussion tabs in the first week of November. The change happened to ensure that the video social network “YouTube comments will become conversations that matter to you” rather than conversations that you wouldn’t like to read.
Going further the new change also meant that the comments won’t be organized in chronological format but YouTube will now rank them by relevancy, taking into account who wrote a comment, +1s, the number of replies and other signals to surface the best comments. Updates from the video’s creator or comment threads they participate in, as well as updates from people in your Google+ circles, will also rank highly. Users who prefer the old way can still switch from the “Top Comments” view to “Newest First.”
This also meant that YouTube users have to connect their accounts to a Google+ page or profile giving conversations a more genuine face. It also now allows you to control how you want to share the comments i.e. private to a certain group or public since Google Circles are in play now. The commenting platform had good news for video creators who can moderate comments and at the same can now block certain words, auto-approve comments from certain fans (based on the circles they are in) and still review comments before they are posted. This gives more power to the content creators and brands that use the network to engage with their fans.
The good and the bad
Google has been pushing the integration of Google Plus and YouTube for quite some time now. From last year onwards Google started asking users to connect their YouTube and Google+ accounts to give more authenticity to the video social network. Finally it rolled out the commenting platform powered by Google+ to not only clean the comments but also give the power to users to moderate the community themselves by allowing voting. A common method followed by most of the popular community driven platforms such as Quora and Reddit, which otherwise would end up turning into a spam network.
But what seems to be a way forward to make the video network more effective came with its trade offs. You can’t reply to old comments, even ones made just hours before the new system kicked in. You also have to sign up for a Google+ account, other issues included new comment notifications being delivered to a user’s Google Plus inbox instead of their YouTube inbox, top comments supposedly being from people you tangentially know on Google+
The YouTube community revolts
Google might have expected a backlash on the move as every new change faces resistance. However, the thing that has annoyed people is the forceful integration of Google+ with YouTube. So even if you don’t want to use the social network – that is trying to catch up fast – you still will have to use it!
To start with, YouTube Co-Founder Jawed Karim openly criticized YouTube for the first time in eight years to express his displeasure. “Why the f–k do I need a Google+ account to comment on a video,” Karim said. Besides the YouTube help video which explains the new YouTube commenting, has received more than 52K dislikes and more than 35K comments expressing displeasure.
The protests were shown on Google products forum on Reddit too. The clear dissatisfaction was about Google shoving its social network down their throats. The discussion thread has received close to 3K upvotes and another 2.8K comments within 8 days of posting the content. If that was not enough then Emma Blackery, the Youtube star, had a musical profane message – “You ruined our site and called it integration / I’m writing this song just to vent our frustration / F**k you, Google Plusssssss!” The video since then has got more than 1M views and has got more than 172K likes.
Like Emma I believe that Google isn’t going to back off from the move even though the online petition has witnessed more than 197K signatures. Since this could be one of the moves that might get people to use Google Plus. To know how the numbers spiked on Google+ with this controversial move, we will have to wait for the next earnings calls.
For now Google seems to have revealed its cards in a smart way. With this move the social network will generate more engagement and Google will have a deeper level of understanding on your social graph with your conversation pattern on the YouTube videos. But then will the commenting system reduce the spam on the network. I don’ think so – people can still post links, there is no character limit and moreover spam, obscenity is still rampant. The worse thing is it is displaying the controversial comments as the most popular ones, as it is getting favorites from the most active Google+ users.
Guess Google will have to come up with a version 2.0 for its commenting system?
Image credit: Mashable
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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“Moderation” is a synonym for censorship. Don’t believe anything you hear or read about the necessity of this integration, because nobody was asking for the tools that Google forcibly presented. These “tools” actually made the quality of comments far worse than they’ve ever been. They threaten your security. They’re annoying and confusing to use. The channels I maintain have experienced a 90%+ drop in participation versus the previous YouTube comment system, and that creates an enormous negative impact on the uploaders’ success.
There will be no gains either to YouTube partners or Google from this integration. Attaching a successful product to a failing one only destroys the successful product. This integration will go down in history as a case study for how to destroy a successful product. After 7 years of ignoring the established partner community who is responsible for all of YouTube’s success, tens of thousands of partner channels have disassociated their channels from Google+, leaving them incapable of communicating with their subscribers. Many channels simply refuse to add the complexity and intrusion that comes with Google+ into their production.
That means when you go to YouTube and have a question or comment you’d like to air, the actual creator can not respond to you. Google has cut the tongues out of the many producers responsible for many of your favorite channels with this update. That leaves your questions and comments to only be addressed by trolls or people who are not experts on the material, and decreases the quality of the content you watch on YouTube.
It will be interesting to see how the NSA, anti-trust lawsuits currently playing out, and the elimination of freedom of choice play out for YouTube and their competition. One thing is for sure, the resistance to YouTube’s destruction in their user community is here to stay just like Google+.