YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kZ76PL1vi6M
Previous: VEDA #8 Blending the iPad
Next: VEDA #10 3D Movie Rant

Categories

Statistics

View count:7,175
Likes:299
Comments:67
Duration:02:20
Uploaded:2010-04-09
Last sync:2024-02-24 21:45
Just some thoughts on social media sites and why we hate it so much when they change.

Good morning, it's the ninth day of April and the eighth day of me vlogging every day in April.
I just uploaded my Vlogbrothers video; I'm about to film a Truth or Fail video.  I'm making a lot of videos these days.

Several commenters on my last video wanted me to talk about the new YouTube redesign, which I think is a fascinating topic, probably not for the same reason that you guys were asking me.

Overall, I think the redesign is positive; I think the site is cleaner.  I- You still got, have access to most of the information that you had before but you have to actually, sort of, go after that information instead of it being jumbled up with everything else.

The biggest problem I have with it is the fact that the comments seem to have gotten simpler and, and harder to read.  I think that YouTube needs to pay attention to comments; I think that comments need to be an important part of YouTube and I think that they need to make discussion easier than it currently is.  That's my big problem; a lot of the rest of it I think is very positive changes.  

I love the subscribe/edit subscriptions button above me.  That lets me subscribe and unsubscribe very easily, whereas before it was very difficult to unsubscribe which I think that was a bad thing for the whole site.

But I think what's really interesting about this is the way that people react to the changes in social networking site design.  I saw this with Facebook and I saw this huge with the YouTube redesign of the channel pages.  Which I thought, I thought that the redesign was great, and everyone else freaked out.  

And I think that the reason for this is that we feel like this is a site that we created.  People don't go to YouTube because of YouTube's technology; they go to YouTube to watch videos created by YouTube members.  So basically what it boils down to is that we created YouTube.  We create all of the reasons why people go to YouTube.  So, it seems kind of like I should have a say.  It seems like it's my site, like, I did it, I created this place.

And then when they go and do things like change the interface completely, it feels like I should have had a say in that decision.  And I'm not saying that YouTube doesn't listen to us, cause YouTube does listen to us.  The people who created the content have nothing to do with the people who own the site.  And this is true very broadly over the entire Internet, and people are starting to get used to the idea.

But when things change, the fact that it's not ours, and that they can do whatever they want with it, gets thrown into our face, and we don't like it.  Cause we don't have any control.  We don't have any control over this place that is very important in our lives.  My only option would be to leave.  And I don't like that option.  

Luckily, I think the people at YouTube recognize the value of the independent content creator community, and they do listen to the things that folks say.  But in the end, it's not mine.  What's mine is my videos.  And that, I think should be enough for all of us.  But it certainly is worth thinking about nonetheless.  Everyone, I will see you tomorrow.