Uploaded August 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Google requested a video response, so here's mine.
This is a response to (and currently awaiting approval):
How do you use Google? (by /user/Google)
youtube.com/watch?v=tNFf44pWuL8
If you want to voice your protest to the plan to remove video responses, then don't bother responding to each other - no-one will ever notice. Perhaps if we all responded to Google's own YouTube channel then at the very least somebody may be made aware of our objections.
From YouTube's official Creator & Partners blog explaining the 'sunsetting' of video responses:
"...you can continue to encourage fans to upload videos with specific titles, hashtags or descriptions (e.g., Video Response To Taylor Swift's Video "22"), so you can find these by searching for them. If you want to highlight them, you can use playlists and channel sections instead of displaying these videos below yours. Any video responses you or your fans have made will still be available and discoverable."
Several points about that. First off, this concept that we are all 'fans' seems so sophomoric and juvenile, and borderline insulting. Secondly, simply putting 'video response' in a video's title might make it 'discoverable', but that's just not the same. Tag video series, competitions, ongoing conversations, creative projects are all reliant on video responses actually appearing under one specific video. Having to specifically search for a video is an incredibly ineffective alternative. The example given, from Conan O'Brien (Video Response To Taylor Swift's Video "22") has over 1 million views - and *IT IS A VIDEO RESPONSE*, not simply titled as one.
All the examples YouTube ever seem to give are of channels with subscriber counts in the millions or at least the hundreds of thousands, and the videos normally have similarly enormous view counts. This is incredibly unrepresentative of the common experience of all but a tiny minority of YouTube users and channels. It is these big channels that are unrepresentative. As one commentor pointed out, only 1% (insert accurate figure here) of YouTube users ever upload a video, should that function be removed, too?
The ordinary users who contribute to those large figures are the very people who *do* make use of the video response function. Large channels and users don't. What made YouTube great and successful was the ordinary users who made, watched and shared videos and built communities around them. If that created a platform for large channels to generate high viewing numbers, and therefore a source of revenue for Google, then that's great. Betraying those ordinary users can't be good policy, however. Only last month Yahoo! outperformed Google in searches, for the first time in 5 years. People *will* look for alternatives if you make too many changes to a winning formula. YouTube is enormous, but that doesn't mean it can't lose some of its relevance and begin its decline to irrelevancy.
I'm not suggesting that this one issue is likely to do anything like that, just that we're not frogs in boiling water here. If the water gets uncomfortably hot we'll just find another pot.
It might be that there is some incredibly effective alternative to yideo responses that YouTube has in store, but there's nothing to indicate that yet. If there is one, then just bloody tell us, and stop interfering with video creator's ability to drive engagement. The overwhelming majority of users do nothing more active on this site than click play and leave comments. What will they watch and comment on when the small video creators leave or stop producing the few videos where *their* views and comments are recognised? A comment on a Jenna Marble video, for example, will stay on screen for approximately 10 seconds. Even these non-video making users of YouTube will soon lose in interest in that.
You know what? I'm stopping here, because I could go on and on about this topic, but I'm afraid that the only people who will read are those who feel the same as me. The chances of anyone in a position of influence in Google actually reading or responding to this is vanishingly small. But how I'd love to be proved wrong.
The creator blog can be found here:
"http://youtubecreator.blogspot.ie/2013/08/so-long-video-responsesnext-up-better.html
Music:
Easy Lemon, by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels[]=Bright&Search=Search+by+Feel
Google requested a video response, so here's mine.
This is a response to (and currently awaiting approval):
How do you use Google? (by /user/Google)
youtube.com/watch?v=tNFf44pWuL8
If you want to voice your protest to the plan to remove video responses, then don't bother responding to each other - no-one will ever notice. Perhaps if we all responded to Google's own YouTube channel then at the very least somebody may be made aware of our objections.
From YouTube's official Creator & Partners blog explaining the 'sunsetting' of video responses:
"...you can continue to encourage fans to upload videos with specific titles, hashtags or descriptions (e.g., Video Response To Taylor Swift's Video "22"), so you can find these by searching for them. If you want to highlight them, you can use playlists and channel sections instead of displaying these videos below yours. Any video responses you or your fans have made will still be available and discoverable."
Several points about that. First off, this concept that we are all 'fans' seems so sophomoric and juvenile, and borderline insulting. Secondly, simply putting 'video response' in a video's title might make it 'discoverable', but that's just not the same. Tag video series, competitions, ongoing conversations, creative projects are all reliant on video responses actually appearing under one specific video. Having to specifically search for a video is an incredibly ineffective alternative. The example given, from Conan O'Brien (Video Response To Taylor Swift's Video "22") has over 1 million views - and *IT IS A VIDEO RESPONSE*, not simply titled as one.
All the examples YouTube ever seem to give are of channels with subscriber counts in the millions or at least the hundreds of thousands, and the videos normally have similarly enormous view counts. This is incredibly unrepresentative of the common experience of all but a tiny minority of YouTube users and channels. It is these big channels that are unrepresentative. As one commentor pointed out, only 1% (insert accurate figure here) of YouTube users ever upload a video, should that function be removed, too?
The ordinary users who contribute to those large figures are the very people who *do* make use of the video response function. Large channels and users don't. What made YouTube great and successful was the ordinary users who made, watched and shared videos and built communities around them. If that created a platform for large channels to generate high viewing numbers, and therefore a source of revenue for Google, then that's great. Betraying those ordinary users can't be good policy, however. Only last month Yahoo! outperformed Google in searches, for the first time in 5 years. People *will* look for alternatives if you make too many changes to a winning formula. YouTube is enormous, but that doesn't mean it can't lose some of its relevance and begin its decline to irrelevancy.
I'm not suggesting that this one issue is likely to do anything like that, just that we're not frogs in boiling water here. If the water gets uncomfortably hot we'll just find another pot.
It might be that there is some incredibly effective alternative to yideo responses that YouTube has in store, but there's nothing to indicate that yet. If there is one, then just bloody tell us, and stop interfering with video creator's ability to drive engagement. The overwhelming majority of users do nothing more active on this site than click play and leave comments. What will they watch and comment on when the small video creators leave or stop producing the few videos where *their* views and comments are recognised? A comment on a Jenna Marble video, for example, will stay on screen for approximately 10 seconds. Even these non-video making users of YouTube will soon lose in interest in that.
You know what? I'm stopping here, because I could go on and on about this topic, but I'm afraid that the only people who will read are those who feel the same as me. The chances of anyone in a position of influence in Google actually reading or responding to this is vanishingly small. But how I'd love to be proved wrong.
The creator blog can be found here:
"http://youtubecreator.blogspot.ie/2013/08/so-long-video-responsesnext-up-better.html
Music:
Easy Lemon, by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?feels[]=Bright&Search=Search+by+Feel
