YouTube Community goes beyond video

https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2016/09/youtube-community-goes-beyond-video.html

by aritraghosh007 • 10 years ago

232 103 10 years ago

youtube-creators.googleblog.com

This looks like Google+ without the name. I always thought this is how Google+ should have been introduced. Small steps, without the hype, integrated in all Google products. Now it's too late and people will be bugged by every future attempt at social sharing / community building.

Roodgorf• 10 years ago

I had the exact same thought, "Oh hey, they're trying Google+ again, quaint."

dzhiurgis2• 10 years ago

I think its more of answer to Patreon where most decent YouTubers nowadays get sponsored and provide extra content in exchange.

I was never bothered to register, hence I assume reducing friction might increase my spend on educainment.

What I really want though, is proper commenting system under videos.

sinxoveretothex3• 10 years ago

What I really want though, is proper commenting system under videos.

I'm curious to know what you mean by that?

As far as youtube comments being the butt-end of jokes about bad comments, I think this is just due to the fact that video is the great common denominator (and thus, the intellectual filter is very very low). Reddit's r/videos is limited to "non-political" videos for much the same reasons (and given that r/politicalvideos is... well, let's say the comment quality is not consistent.

I don't really see how this can be improved: a voting system won't filter low-effort/common denominator comments if what the majority wants is low effort comments.

Or just if the mass of low effort comments is too large. And since low effort is easy to make, the mass will be large.

CGPGrey on what kind of ideas/memes spread faster: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/this-video-will-make-you-angry

H3h3 on the insane number of views on 'minecraft sex' videos (which is exactly the kind of thing I mean when taking about common denominator): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LhrbSp6Mw

And then there's the lessons of Twitch Plays Pokemon: they had to remove the ability to request multiple keypresses at once because people kept stalling (start10) for example.

chc• 10 years ago

Isn't the core function of Patreon patronage (i.e. giving money to the artist)? Does YouTube Community do that at all?

PavlovsCat3• 10 years ago

The answer to Patreon would be to actually care about people; they have rely on things like Patreon because to outright trust Youtube/Google alone would be suicidal to their online video career thingy. If that's the only channel you can communicate to your fans with and your only stream of revenue, you know it could be gone any second without even an answer from a human for some of the more messed up things. That's kind of all you need to know. Big youtubers might get some grease when they squeak, but for every one of those there are probably hundreds or thousands we never hear of.

legohead• 10 years ago

a swing and a miss. there already exist powerful platforms for social sharing that most if not all big youtubers take advantage of.

I have over 700 hundred youtube subscriptions and check out my feed daily. I definitely do not want my subscription feed clogged up with texts, gifs, and whatnot. I really don't care what the political beliefs of XYZ hobby channel have, I watch for their specialized content.

youtube is the powerhouse behind video. stick with that, continue making it better. there is still more to be done.

minimaxir• 10 years ago

a swing and a miss. there already exist powerful platforms for social sharing that most if not all big youtubers take advantage of.

Which is why Google had to develop a native social solution; they were bleeding potential users who need a feasible way to get in touch with their fans. May be simple but it is better than a bare bulb.

For example, the previous method of YouTubers making a simple announcement was to make an announcement video, which is dumb.

mulmen2• 10 years ago

Is that dumb though? It's a video site, I go there to watch videos. When the local TV broadcaster wants to make an announcement they do it with video, not a text.

I do see your point, there are some video-centric features YouTube could add but I'm skeptical that's all this will be.

dawnerd• 10 years ago

Bleeding potential users? They have much bigger issues than creators keeping in touch with fans. I agree dedicated announcement videos are dumb, I'm more than happy to follow the channel on twitter or facebook if I want their updates. Most of the time I don't. Last thing I want is a forced feed of everyone posting every time they're streaming on twitch. There's already a system to notify there so doubling it up is useless.

riskable• 10 years ago

I was really hoping that, after reading the title, YouTube Community was going to be about Google crowdsourcing DMCA takedown request reviews. As in, let the community (a jury of your peers) decide if a takedown is fraudulent (I've got many, yet to receive a legitimate claim!) rather than relying on the "word" of an automated robot that only knows how to say, "take it down!".

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

YouTube Community was going to be about Google crowdsourcing DMCA takedown request reviews.

Crowdsourcing would be incompatible with DMCA safe-harbor requirements (so they wouldn't be "DMCA takedown request reviews" if they were crowdsourced.)

sp332• 10 years ago

Maybe not DMCA, but ContentID. If the algorithm finds a match, let some humans look at it before slapping ads on it and handing the money to someone else.

euyyn2• 10 years ago

Plus who are we kidding, if it were crowdsourced all of them would be flagged as fraudulent.

mulmen2• 10 years ago

That's not really how juries work in reality, that's how juries work on Reddit.

It's an interesting idea though, it's far too easy to issue a fraudulent DMCA takedown and there are no repercussions as far as I know.

georgemcbay• 10 years ago

Filing a false, bad-faith DMCA claim is technically an act of perjury, but I've never heard of anyone convicted or even seriously threatened with this action since it is almost impossible to prove bad faith.. ESPECIALLY when algorithms are automatically doing much of the damage.

In any case, I think YouTube kinda subverts much of the DMCA provisions by having their own claim system (the whole ContentID thing) which often comes into play and causes problems (for content creators, not for people making claims of dubious authenticity) before real DMCA claims are made.

doh2• 10 years ago

I understand your pain, but I do believe this can be still solved with a technology, they just have to care. For instance fair use is very hard to identify accurately but it's not impossible. There is less than 0.01% cases when it can't be decide automatically (still a huge number though) and those should be reviewed by people.

YouTube's problem is that there is no interested to improve the product (content id). Technology is good enough, but the product itself sucks.

Full disclosure, I'm heavily biased as I built my company on their (and others) inefficiencies.

CobrastanJorji• 10 years ago

I do believe this can be still solved with a technology, they just have to care. For instance fair use is very hard to identify accurately but it's not impossible. There is less than 0.01% cases when it can't be decide automatically.

Fair use is not a definition -- it is a legal doctrine. Conclusively determining whether a video is fair use not only impossible for a computer, it is impossible for people. The only way to determine whether a video falls under fair use conclusively is to conduct a Federal trial and a series of appeals.

dexwiz• 10 years ago

So channels can now tweet/blog directly in youtube, and not on Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/Instagram/Whatever? Sounds like one more place to put ads.

EDIT: I mean "sponsored content."

biot• 10 years ago

Sure, every online property is a place for ads. However, in this case content producers don't have to say "Subscribe to my YouTube channel for new videos. Oh, and if you want updates follow me on Twitter. I also share pictures on Instagram. And if you're looking for upcoming events, check out Facebook...".

Not like anyone who is already doing that is going to stop, but Google is hoping that maybe there will be a shift towards doing it all in one place, particularly if video is their primary medium.

hiddenkrypt• 10 years ago

The phrase "Youtube Community" does not bring positive images to mind when I hear it.

kirykl• 10 years ago

Within niche areas of interest, there actually are communities between content creators. I've seen some neat collaborations. But I'd say there is no community at all in the comments.

somedangedname• 10 years ago

Plus the dregs of the Google+ community. Look at the people commenting on the announcement - social media gurus, 'futurists', wannabe viral video producers...

flamedoge• 10 years ago

Reminds me of twitch chatters

NeutronBoy• 10 years ago

Like Youtube (and just about every social website ever), size matters - bigger is better to a point of critical mass, then it's all downhill from there.

ljk3• 10 years ago

Exactly my reaction when I saw it. The recent drama/scandals doesn't help either.

WilliamDhalgren6• 10 years ago

I'm apparently out of the loop; could you help me: what scandals? what happened?

golemotron• 10 years ago

The word "community" is now where the phrase "enterprise software" used to be. The first thing you do when you hear it is groan.

stephengillie• 10 years ago

The phrase "Youtube Community" makes me think of the sub-communities, such as the ARG communities - which use Youtube for video hosting, Patreon for funding, independent web forums (such as Unfiction) for data gathering, and apps (like Horror Amino) for community management.

Were Youtube to build feature parity to each of those sites, they might see more communities self-contained within Youtube.

niftich2• 10 years ago

I believe this is a sensible course of action and a natural evolution/pivot/hedge of making use of an existing social network/community to satisfy a couple goals (for Google):

- Have a general-purpose social network, but bootstrapped from a userbase where it can be welcome rather than vilified (unlike Buzz, Google+, etc.)

- Stop the slow trickle of (duplicative, cross-pollinated) traffic from the Youtube community to other platforms, because their own platform is lacking (they needed Twitter-like micro-announcements badly)

- Better arm themselves against other sites that have done video from the beginning but are expected to develop a similar direction (Twitch)

- Better arm themselves against other sites that didn't start off with video but have branched out into it (Facebook & subsidiaries, Twitter & subsidiaries, Tumblr, most other social networks these days)

Hopefully this also stops the (IMO, frankly irrational [1][2][3]) speculation that Twitter will be bought out by Google.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418727#12420732 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083561#12083975 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11913828#11914620

raizex• 10 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I completely agree with every point you made there.

johnm1019• 10 years ago

To add to parent, this is repurposed tech because it's part of Google+. https://googleblog.blogspot.de/2015/11/introducing-new-googl... I would be absolutely floored if it wasn't the same tech behind the scenes. In that sense, they've taken something that was actually working with G+ [highlighted in blog post above] and are taking a shot at leveraging that. I really like that they were able to push this internally using a 'white label' process [speculation]. In big corps everyone has the disease that their name and (internal) brand has to be on everything.

madamelic• 10 years ago

Just make sure not to:

1) Swear.

2) Say anything offensive.

3) Have fun.

4) Forget to mention how delicious and refreshing Coca-Cola is.

izacus• 10 years ago

And hope the random hammer of ContentID doesn't find your phrase similar to some corpo jingle.

guelo• 10 years ago

Google's social product design is just a mess. When I open Youtube I can barely figure out what's going on.

rajathagasthya• 10 years ago

This is so true. Using YouTube on iOS is such a bad experience. Add to it that it's not designed as every other iOS app (because hey it's 'material design'), it's just feels so out of place.

brazzledazzle• 10 years ago

I'm probably missing something but it seems like every app I use on iOS is basically an island. Even among Apple apps there seems to be different UX guidelines at play. To me iOS apps feel a lot like flash sites in the late 90s/early 00s in terms of the variety of interfaces. So it doesn't feel out of place to me. The only thing jarring for me is how bright red it is. Not a fan of that.

kagamine3• 10 years ago

YouTube is generally speaking a UX mess and the same goes for all Google products.

On YT, if I am listening to a DJ mix, for example, I don't need to be watching the video (or looking at a still image) for 1 & 1/2 hours, so I will make the window very small. The resizing on desktop now hides the comments and I have to size the window big again to see them. The same video on mobile has the comments under the video and the 'up next' and 'related videos' list under the comments. It's a complete and utter mish-mash of layouts.

Contrast with the "live now" streams; the comments/live chat window is _only_ visible when the window is resized for mobile. Live chat is hidden in full desktop view.

YT is a disaster, and perhaps they should focus on getting some degree of consistency and usability before adding new features and complexity.

bemmu• 10 years ago

Will this be accessible from the API?

kagamine3• 10 years ago

All the YT apps I have tried in the past have failed because it seems YT alter the API so often that developers just give up trying to fix what YT break too often. SO i would assume that this will break all existing apps and some will again die off. No doubt the new features will make it into the API, but at a cost to users and developers.

Sylos2• 10 years ago

Yeah, I've seen multiple great YouTube-apps die because of that. The best-functioning YouTube-app that I currently know, actually scrapes the webpage to get its information. It can't do subscriptions because of that, but I can easily replace that with an RSS Reader.

GuiA3• 10 years ago

This is a good way to kickstart a social network - integrate it deeply into a product that already has a very well established userbase.

As other commenters pointed out, this is infinitely more likely to stick than Google Plus. I've personally never felt that Google was serious about Google+. If they had been, they'd have gone for an approach like this one from the start. For instance, integrate it natively to Gmail (and of course make it individually accessible on its own domain) - it worked for Hangouts adoption.

Make it a new tab in Gmail, make it very fast and easy to switch between your email and your social feed. Many people already spend many hours in gmail, or have a tab always open anyway. Adoption would have been instant, and if they had done that in 2011, maybe it would have had a shot at dethroning Facebook.

NegativeK• 10 years ago

They integrated Buzz with Gmail and were probably terrified of doing that again.

GuiA3• 10 years ago

Yeah. Well, for this strategy to work, you need your product to not be thoughtless crap, which Buzz was. So that's the hard part - have good taste.

hackaflocka2• 10 years ago

Buzz could have been a great idea IMHO if handled properly. What got them in trouble was the underhanded way in which they 'friended' people, exposing mistresses to wives.

josu• 10 years ago

This is a good way to kickstart a social network

It certainly seems like it, but are there any examples where a social network has been built this way?

niftich2• 10 years ago

Xbox Live [1]. Steam Community [2]. Curse [3].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2013/10/14/microsofts...

[2] https://www.engadget.com/2007/09/13/steam-community-official...

[3] http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/15/curse-voice-hits-1-million...

ljk3• 10 years ago

This is a good way to kickstart a social network - integrate it deeply into a product that already has a very well established userbase.

Isn't that what they did with g+? forcing youtube users to use g+ with youtube and people didn't like it very much

GuiA3• 10 years ago

No, that was way after Google+ launched. And in this case, forcing users of a successful product A to use it in conjunction with a failing product B, to try to save B, is an unambiguously terrible strategy.

drusepth2• 10 years ago

As other commenters pointed out, this is infinitely more likely to stick than Google Plus. I've personally never felt that Google was serious about Google+.

Is this actually separate from G+? As someone who actively uses it daily, this definitely seems like each channel could very well just be a community in G+ Communities (which is alive and thriving already, though of course not to the extent that YouTube as a whole is), with comments potentially mirrored between YouTube and the G+ community (in the same way comments are mirrored between e.g. the comments on this post and G+ posts of this url).

Could definitely be a way to introduce different audience to G+ from a new vector.

WilliamDhalgren6• 10 years ago

What's G+ like these days? Used it a few years ago, only social net I gave a serious try, and was really quite fond of it.

Circles were quite a practical way of following topics of interest, w/o having to actually communicate with anyone or disclose anything about myself to anyone (as opposed to "friending" anyone on fb, which notifies the other party as if I actually wanted any interaction with them), and there was quite a lot of say tech folks in various topics to track.

But as a topical news aggregator, there are other options, such as hackernews, reddit, various planets and desktop/console rss/atom aggregators etc, so not a real gain.

Didn't stick to it mainly cuz I'm apparently too introverted for classic friend-to-friend social networking, as I suspected; didn't really have anything to say about anything, and didn't care much to hear about the daily fluff in the lives of acquaintances either.

So what kinds of concepts/services developed and thrived on G+ since google gave up on yt integration?

WilliamDhalgren6• 10 years ago

Why do they need another social network? If it helps youtube users, ofc its a good move. But if its means to an end, to create a social network -- I thought their main motive for having a social net of some kind was to use vote/comment/share signals as additional data to improve search and ad placement, given that those are more informative than which link of the ones offered by search you choose to click.

But they don't need a massive social net just for that, and they have G+. Isn't that enough to do the job?

ravenstine• 10 years ago

Google has fallen flat on its face every time it has tried to build a social network of any kind. I'm really not sure I even want this.

x2398dh1• 10 years ago

A testament to what you wrote is when you look at the comment section of this Google blog, where there's a ton of people sharing the article on their Google+, which looks like a bunch of clones repeating what the article just said for some odd reason.

jkldotio2• 10 years ago

Censorship and demonetisation on YouTube seems to be happening to people fairly regularly, and without appeal, via poorly calibrated algorithms, corporate pressure and to satisfy mobs of complaining people for various reasons. The rules seem to be vague to the point of meaninglessness and it seems even the stars of the platform who often share managers and production companies with other stars have difficulty getting in touch with YouTube to resolve issues.

I think most content producers have wised up to this and diversify their audience over multiple platforms. If you rely on the income putting all your eggs in the YouTube basket is a massive risk until they clean up their processes (there are many automated and social methods to do some of this but they seem completely uninterested in doing it).

poopsintub• 10 years ago

Play store has had the same issue for years, and there really isn't an alternative either. You can try to diversify, but nothing compares to the android crowd due to low, low cost devices. Google doesn't want to pay for decent support for something making them a ton of money, why would they do it for YouTube? You're stuck. Play the game and play it well.

infinitesoup2• 10 years ago

Censorship and demonetisation on YouTube seems to be happening to people fairly regularly, and without appeal, via poorly calibrated algorithms

Demonetization happens when a video doesn't meet their "advertiser-friendly" policy, but there is an appeal process where you can have a human look at it to determine if the original assessment was wrong [0]. Do you have data to support your claim that their algorithms are "poorly calibrated"?

Can you provide some examples of "censorship"? They do have policies that things like graphic content or spam is not permitted and will be removed from the site, but I think that's reasonable.

It seems even the stars of the platform who often share managers and production companies with other stars have difficulty getting in touch with YouTube to resolve issues.

YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671

[1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3545535?hl=en

[2] https://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/benefit-levels.html?noap...

urgerestraint• 10 years ago

YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].

Multiple demonetized channels have stated that they have not received responses via the official support channels. It's all well and good stating a 1-business day response time, but if Youtube doesn't follow through that, where does that leave the content creators?

It's like businesses with support response SLAs that are cleared by the sending of a robo-email from their support system. No actual support has been rendered.

tramparam• 10 years ago

When Pewdiepie (person on your [2] link on Silver & Up banner) complains [0] that YouTube isn't communicating enough, most people will agree that problem is at their side.

Demonetization happens when a video doesn't meet their "advertiser-friendly" policy, but there is an appeal process where you can have a human look at it to determine if the original assessment was wrong [0]. Do you have data to support your claim that their algorithms are "poorly calibrated"?

It happens all the time when content creators are using content under fair use. Jim Sterling goes over demonetisation with ContentID [1] and latest changes [2] in his videos. I don't know if he have used that email support, but it would be fair to assume that he have tried and gave up.

[0] https://youtu.be/aQVMnW6LGfM?t=222

[1] https://youtu.be/cK8i6aMG9VM?t=62

[2] https://youtu.be/gkfQsQlI8T8?t=96

oxide• 10 years ago

There is no censorship IIRC, the entire thing was overblown. (shocking, huh?)

if you put blacklisted words in your tags, description or title your video gets demonitized. It isn't censorship of content whatsoever.

Did you really think youtube bots were watching every second of monetized content looking for the f-word?

lacker• 10 years ago

Finally, we can take the great experience of YouTube comments, and bring it to even more places!

NamTaf• 10 years ago

Excellent! I've always needed a way to interact with the type of people who make Youtube comments!

Seriously though, I get what they're trying to make a play at - the small communities that spring up around content creators based on a certain topic. It's clearly a shot across the bow of Facebook pages which can embed videos in a feed as well as post discussion pieces, etc.

I would've personally liked to see them do it a bit more robustly. This and other platforms allow for creator - consumer interaction, but not consumer - consumer, and I think that's a differentiating strength of content creators on Youtube. Take it from being a copy of a Facebook page, to a sort of hybrid Facebook page/group with one leading creator and then interaction amongst all the consumers of that content. It could've potentially recreated the forums community feel using an existing set of communities as the kickstarter for the platform.

em3rgent0rdr• 10 years ago

How long till Google kills it?

euyyn2• 10 years ago

Are you a bot?

tsumnia• 10 years ago

I'm sure this will be a great idea. But I'm going to be honest here, I don't want channels sending me messages. Its another notification on the long list of other notifications I block or disable. I've already unsubscribed from one popular channel because the host used the messaging service to announce a new video. I'll see them when I have time to watch them, don't harass me otherwise.

jasonkostempski• 10 years ago

There's already a perfect solution to getting notifications when new video's are posted on a channel, RSS. It won't bug me unless I ask it to, I don't need a YouTube account for it and I don't have to guess what the (3) next to the channel name actually means (new upload? new like? new algorithm glitch?). I might like to do the same for "Community" posts for some channels but it doesn't look like they do RSS for that (yet?).

infinitesoup2• 10 years ago

I found an option to turn off notifications for those messages. If you open the notification settings for a channel that you're subscribed to, you can uncheck "Include community post notifications" and then stay subscribed to just get the video notifications.

macspoofing• 10 years ago

Oh oh.

orionblastar• 10 years ago

Actually we need better moderation powers when trolls start to fight on our video comments. Some stuff gets offensive with racist, bigoted, and homophobic slurs and other things. It is just not something I'd like to have under my Videos, but when a video gets popular it attracts more people to comment on it and sometimes they are trolls. I think those slurs should trigger some sort of moderation to hide them until they are approved or deleted, like posting multiple links might be spam, etc.

kagamine3• 10 years ago

Even the milder comments can sometimes just focus on being so negative that it becomes an irritation.

On the other hand, certain communities have nothing but supportive and positive comments. Much of what I watch doesn't attract a single criticism, people are just happy that the youTubers keep providing quality content.

hackaflocka2• 10 years ago

"YouTube Community" is not 'verbable' (e.g. "Tweet it", or "inbox me").

huskyr2• 10 years ago

I like to propose a variation of Zawinski's law (1) that i think is appropriate here:

Every app attempts to expand until it has a Facebook-like timeline. Apps which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles

ebalit• 10 years ago

You mean Twitter-like timeline. At risk of being a bit "pedantic", I think credit should go to Twitter and not Facebook for this idea.

Facebook Newsfeed was a smart move. They took the best idea of Twitter at the right time. That and introducing asymmetrical relation.

They're trying to do the same thing with Youtube. And apparently Google isn't going to wait to respond.

huskyr2• 10 years ago

Maybe i should just rephrase it to 'timeline' or 'newsfeed'.

I don't think you can credit one single company for 'inventing' the idea of a timeline. Before Twitter there were RSS readers, before that blogs, before that newsgroups, etc. Facebook just did a very good implementation of the idea, obviously inspired by everything that preceded it. Twitter is a good example of that of course.

72deluxe• 10 years ago

Am I the only one who goes to YouTube to watch videos, not browse comments?

hatsunearu• 10 years ago

Something nobody asked for, whereas audio-only content that everyone wants seems MIA.

r-w• 10 years ago

So… they’re slowly turning YouTube into a video-focused Google+.

YouTube Community goes beyond video

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