Last week, Google rolled out some changes to the YouTube comments section. The reaction about the change from the YouTube community has been mostly negative.
My belief is that Google is less concerned about this community than it is about building (forced) engagement with its Google+ community. According to Google’s blog post on the topic, “This way, YouTube comments will become conversations that matter to you.”
More from the blog:
Here’s more detail about the new YouTube comments powered by Google+:
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. You can still see the most recent comments by switching from “Top Comments” to “Newest First.”
Join the conversation publicly or privately: You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone, only people in your Circles, or just your bestie. Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations.
Easily moderate comments: If you also post videos on your channel, you’ll have new tools to review comments before they’re posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans.
Chief among the YouTube community’s complaints, however, were the loss of anonymity that goes along with being forced to use a Google+ account to comment on YouTube videos.
“Stop trying to ram your own data-mining crap down my throat,” one user posted on a Reddit thread catching fire on the website.
And perhaps more telling was YouTube’s cofounder Jawed Karim comment – his first comment in eight years (right after his “Me at the zoo” video, the very first video uploaded to the platform).
Below is a video from an English YouTuber sharing her thoughts about the change. She also acknowledges at the end of the video that despite the uproar Google is unlikely to change back.
So what does it mean for your business? Well, to begin with you need to get cracking at building out your Google+ business page.