YouTube goes beyond video with new community features
YouTube looking towards the future of the growing platform, which looks more like a social network than solely a video hosting service. They’re beta testing an expanded community with ‘YouTube Community’ where creators can share GIFs, images, text post, live video, and much more.
YouTube has grown up a lot over the past ten years. In fact, being a YouTuber is becoming an important and common career path for many budding creatives. Sure, YouTubers still get questions of how they make money or if that’s a real job, but it’s a come a long way since the early days.
The Vlogbrothers published a video talking about the changes, and as Hank Green say any changes on YouTube are unwelcomed. These changes aren’t as radical as a new design or demonizing videos, but these changes may have a warmer welcome than others. While they do alter how creators interact with subscribers, it’ll likely go unused by many still. YouTube has had a community comment wall on each channel for years, and it’s become a cesspool of insults and spam. The YouTube Community tab will feel more like a stream of thoughts from creators; that looks a lot like a Twitter feed.
Google could make YouTube the defacto community in the future, ditching Google+ altogether in the long run. Either way, YouTube has a new way for creators to talk with subscribers instead of pointing towards Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. All of that can be shared in-house, whether this is something that will be forgotten about or a great thing that will take YouTube to the next level is yet to be seen. I’m siding on the feature will go unused by creators, partly because it’s more economical for creators to share their thoughts on Twitter or Facebook where the audiences are larger.
Tell us in the comments below what you think about YouTube Community, and whether you’d like to see updates from creators.