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.
Nice looking site Jay. Good content updating. We’ll be keeping an eye on you for sure. I’m always looking for blogs with good relevant seo material that’s updated frequently.