Youtube comments would not be something I’d consider useful or valuable most of the time. I’ve posted videos there that I never bothered looking back through the comments. The first lesson of Youtube: don’t feed the trolls. Since it’s infancy, Youtube viewers have been known for leaving comments that are often harsh, off-topic, spammy, or just rude. Seldom are these comments of any help in providing useful feedback. On the rare occasions people ask a question, it goes unnoticed by the channel owner because the vast amount of drivel drowns out any compelling reason to review the videos.
Ready for change in Youtube comments?
On it’s quest to weave Google+ throughout all Google properties, Youtube has announced the switch to Google+ comments with ranking will begin rolling out soon including:
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Comments you care about move to the top: You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles.
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Join the conversation publicly or privately: You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone on YouTube and Google+, only people in your Circles or just your bestie. Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations.
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Better ways to moderate comments: You have new tools to review comments before they’re posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans. These can help you spend less time moderating, and more time sharing videos and connecting with your fans.
What does that mean for us?
- Higher ranked people will stand out in comments. If you have a lot of positive comments that others “thumbs up” will stand out in the comments section. I wonder if that factors in to how many times we’ve been circled in Google+?
- You can leave comments with varying degrees of privacy
- Moderating comments will help the community we build into our channel, so we need to review these more often.
- Determined trolls can make a Google+ page and then an anonymous name with it, which then can comment on Youtube videos.
- More confusion on if personalities need to focus on a personal profile or making a business page in Google+ as it relates to associating it to Youtube pages.
- Over 5,000 subscribers will allow you to see who your most engaged subscribers are and where they show up.
I am hopeful that the comment changes will improve the experience across the web. I still would like to see a review of comments when using the Youtube app on my Xbox, but that’s a story for another day.
