YouTube Layout Changes Disappoint Users

The new YouTube layout changes have been met with a lot of criticism from users for a good reason. I have to admit for a week I thought something I changed in my browser settings was causing YouTube’s layout to break .. but then I realized it was showing this way for everyone, on purpose.

A few weeks has passed and I’m still amazed no changes have been made. I decided to do a quick search on google for anything posted in the past 24 hours related to Youtube Layout Changes. This forum was near the top of the results and I clicked it. Notice how every single post is negative? Here are some posts I’d like to highlight:

Furburt: “Let me just say this here. Youtube is the worst (noticeable) online community there is. Worse than 4 chan, or Something Awful or Gamefaqs. As a video sharing website it’s fine, but as a community, you could not do worse, unless you search for bad communities intentionally. ”

FFS-dontcare “The previous system was good enough. We should be given a choice between this new system and the old one by way of selecting it in account options or something, not be forced to use the new one. The old one was more than adequate, and it was easily straight-forward.”

Samurai Gumba “YouTube would have to dispense diamonds onto my keyboard before my experience would be measurably improved.”

Alucard “I dislike the new layout, I dislike the new rating system, and I especially dislike the new Beta channels that they thought necessary for all users to have. My “related videos” are not even related to the stuff I like to watch either, or at best only tangentally related. With each “improvement” it gets worse.”

Is anyone at Google noticing the dislike to what YouTube is Doing? Some people are starting to get the feeling they aren’t. Are YouTube’s legal issues distracting them? Maybe the continued financial losses are just killing morale?

Sooner or later jobs will be lost over this at YouTube one way or another. The backlash and negative impact can’t be avoided now. A mistake this big can’t be swept under the rug. Google has to realize the YT devision is backfiring more than a 83 Gran Torino and it’s only a matter of time before they put in a new pit crew.

My hope is the fresh group that comes in has a better understanding of easy design improvements can be if they build them around community suggestions and listen to user feedback. Call me overly optimistic, but I think their ability to lose more money than anyone else for more years than anyone else in the entire video space gives them about 25 more lives.

The 80/20 Rule for Effective Social Networking

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other social networks that provide or feature status updates from users have taken the internet by storm over the past several years.

MySpace helped lead the Web 2.0 revolution before it crashed and burned. Now Facebook seems like it could be headed down the same path.

Originally, the first huge wave of Facebook users embraced the network mainly because of the value add factor. It was possible to be more aware of your competitors, get useful tips from people you trusted, and discover new and emerging trends by monitoring the socialsphere. In some ways, we were building Web 2.0 together.

Recently Facebook is a relaxing area where the last thing they think about is business or growing their personal network. I get the feeling most people aren’t measuring the ROI of status messages left by their friends, and basically you end up coming out of the whole situation knowing what everyone is drinking, eating, and watching on TV. This data is already available from a variety of sources so I don’t really need to get it from Facebook.

So what is the 80/20 Rule of Social Networking?
One of my associates that introduced me to Facebook in 2008 explained the value add factor – simply put, 80% of your posts need to add value to your readers, while at most 20% can be about your breakfast or your plans for the afternoon. If you violate the 80/20 rule you will not gain followers who value their time.

Rarely do people calculate the real cost required for others to read their updates. These are people I unfollow. There are many friends I have in the real world that I enjoy to hang out with during non work hours, but that I don’t necessary want to read updates from everyday of the week, all year long. This isn’t because I value their friendship less, I just don’t have the capacity to read what 45 people had for lunch, what they are planning to do that evening, or what type of wine they just opened.

With over 25,000 friends, subscriptions, and connections between Youtube, Tumblr, LinkedIN, Facebook, and Twitter, the value of the information I receive has been in a steep decline. Perhaps if I was spamming commercial products this would be a more ideal setup, but I’m simply there to consume and analyze information. This is 7 times more people than live in my hometown!

How to Unfriend your Grandma on Facebook
The recent South Park espisode featuring Facebook spelled out clearly what many of us have been thinking for the past 6 months about Facebook. For the past several weeks I’ve typically unfollowed/unfriended 25-30 people per day acrossed all networks I participate in to help keep the noise level down. Sometimes, these accounts I unfollow may be people I value relationships with in Real Life, and their feelings get hurt, or they get mad, or just don’t understand how I could unfriend them.

The problem is growing larger now that most people who primary used Facebook for business in the past are following their parents, siblings, mate’s friends, people from the bar, etc. The reason is simple – how the hell are you supposed to reject friend requests from blood relatives and people you really value without them feeling hurt in some way?

For the most part, I’ve been inactive on my personal Facebook account for the past 6 months because it just costs to much to use timewise. I’m not the only one. Professional networks such as LinkedIn are experiencing record traffic levels as Facebook’s traffic starts to level off after giant gains recently. Business people may seek more niche driven networks to increase ROI on time.

If you unfollow/unfriend me because this message cost $40.00 of your time to read and wasn’t helpful I understand. That’s how the world should work.

YouTube Trades Star Ratings for Likes and Dislikes

YouTube has traded in the 5 star rating system for a Like/Dislike system. Off the bat, it seems to devalue search results (no longer can see the rating of each video) by only indicating which videos are most liked and not displaying any ratings information for the other 90% of videos on the page.

YouTube has been busy changing their site and user experience every week for the past month. Half the time i’m wondering if my browser is misfiring. Did they test all these layout changes with certain users before making them public so quickly?

They are changing the user experience so fast it seems like it would be impossible to measure the effects of each new variant to optimize and learn from each change.

Here is what the new Like/Dislike display looks like for a video AFTER you vote:

I’m not sure if it’s just the “Friend this user / Subscribe to user” mystery that still annoys me or if YouTube is continuing to do things that just don’t make much sense? I guess they are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

With nearly a $1.5millon/day shortfall on revenue, a horrible social networking experience, and basically no evolution for 3 years; I think somehow I have to count these recent blunders as progress.

Maybe Google moved the old YouTube crew over to Google Buzz, always keeping the same people on projects that are years late to market and years behind.

YouTube Removes Stats for Number of Videos a User Has Viewed

YouTube has permanently removed the stats display for the number of videos a user has watched from user profile pages. Anyone who spends much time on YouTube quickly so the number of videos they viewed reach into the thousands or tens of thousands.

When I first noticed the display was gone, I assumed it was because people were complaining to YouTube that they did not want the world to know they had watched 300,000 videos. By chance I was browsing a YouTube developer/bug report forum on their site and came across the following post from a legitimate YouTube staff member:

“We’ve seen some of you asking what occurred to the number of video views displayed on your channel. Unfortunately, due to technical constraints, we had to permanently disable this feature. This is not a bug, it is no longer an available feature on the site.”

Looks like you can kiss that stat goodbye.

HULU Subscription Fees Set For 2010

Chase Carey, Deputy Chairman of News Corp, revealed HULU will begin charging for subscriptions as early as 2010. While Carey said that some content would remain free, he explained that a free model of distribution did not do their content justice.

I think a subscription based model could work well for HULU. They are capturing a lot of content and broadcasting it in unique ways. Example: I was able to watch the every play of the last Notre Dame football game in about 42 minutes. This was the fastest paced football I’ve ever seen. All parts of the broadcast that didn’t involve game play were cut out. This literally changed the football viewing experience 180 degrees for me.

We all understand the downsides that come from free services. The YouTube Lag problem has been driving me nuts for months. I’d gladly pay a few dollars each month for better service. HULU has picked up on this and is running with it. Would you pay for HULU?