11 Dec YouTube Adjusts Comments to Allow Google+
It seems like social networks continue to shoot themselves in the foot. Facebook’s changes to its News Feed algorithm continue to drop reach and impact fan growth. These recent changes have led to some major adjustments in the way larger brands need to approach content and draw visibility from their fan bases.
Year after year we have seen ongoing declines in fan growth as the News Feed Algorithm continues to change:
But YouTube recently made a major change, which if you haven’t heard by now, was pretty serious for most users.
The Change
On November 6, YouTube began rolling out changes to its commenting system that requires anyone commenting on a video to use Google+.
With claims that “…better commenting is coming to YouTube,” the roll-out sparked enough controversy to cause more than 220,000 users (as of publishing this blog post) to sign a petition on change.org.
The Impact
Aside from the obvious impact to privacy, which is the main reason more than 220k people have signed a petition, is that the lack of anonymity on the platform has hurt YouTube engagement pretty seriously.
While most channel owners get fed up with spam, trolls, and all-around poor comments, some YouTubers have expressed that comments and other types of engagement on their videos have dropped pretty significantly. Inevitably, what those comments and interactions lead to are more views.
More views = more money when you partner with YouTube.
With research showing Google closing the gap for social logins, what people say versus what they do conflicts quite interestingly with 220k users petitioning for privacy.
Do you manage a YouTube channel? How has the change impacted you in the past month?
