Gadgetory

all right never really thought I would make this video but here we are dear YouTube first of all I love you guys and there's a lot of things you guys do really well especially for creators that no one else does well but there's also plenty of things that you guys could do better so YouTube you've been an amazing place for creators and video makers obviously to be for the better part of the last decade even more than that and it's been awesome but there's also been this like constant background tic this little rash of things that just sort of wither away at the creators trust in the platform some faster than others now with me luckily you've missed me with a lot of that stuff like this is a tech channel so pretty PG content nothing super violent or graphic or anything like that so I didn't have any problems with monetization there was no ad pocalypse here nothing crazy but you know the phrase the straw that broke the camel's back obviously this camel's back is not broken but there have been plenty of straws and just plenty of weird head scratchers here's a little background for those who don't know on the latest straw the thumbnails experiment so youtuber tweeted at YouTube pretty recently asking why it appeared that their custom thumbnails seemed to be broken for some of their viewers YouTube replied to that youtubers tweet we are running a small experiment where point 3 percent of viewers will see an auto-generated thumbnail instead of your custom thumbnail we are not removing the ability to create your custom thumbnail but we hope to gain insight on auto-generated thumbnails for the future wait see you just what so ok YouTube I feel like I'm I might even have like a more level-headed response than than many other people I try to see both sides of it I went to business school I get that this is a business decision you want to make auto-generated thumbnails better for the millions of people that use it so you got to run some experiments do some a be testing get some results and then implement useful changes I get it this is how you evolved this is how you make YouTube calm better for people but you got to tell people about this unless I tell people I don't mean a little post in the Google product forum that literally less than a thousand people have ever seen I don't mean a YouTube video on a channel with 60,000 subscribers that less than 10,000 people have ever seen because it turns out when you run a small experiment that only affects 0.3 percent of your 1.9 billion monthly active users for a few weeks you can expect that change to affect more than 5 million people so YouTube when you run experiments like this which I'm sure you do all the time without even telling people but when you do two things one tell everyone and to make it optional like here's the thing YouTube actually I really liked that little forum post I think it was well detailed it explained everything it was timely and I love the little creator insider channel actually giving us like a video look maybe talking to a person who's involved with these experiments and technically they do their job of informing people of the changes that are gonna happen before they happen it shows that you're aware that you should be giving us the heads up but clearly almost nobody saw it right so when I say tell everyone put it on the homepage or if that's too drastic which I think it is put it in the creator studio that you know we check every single day and then when I say make it optional I know again I can be tough but I really think this kind of stuff should be either opt-in or opt-out testing I think opt-in is tough because not a lot of people will log in and opt-in and you won't really get those massive millions of people for the sample size you need for your testing so I think opt out is the way to go you tell us about these things you're going to be implementing and if it comes across our dashboard and there's something we don't like then we uncheck the box and we opt out so ok if we have to redo this whole thumbnails thing with my two little nuggets of advice here's how it will go down so you work at YouTube and you want to make improvements to auto-generated thumbnails which the vast majority of the millions of hours of video uploaded to YouTube constantly will use auto-generated thumbnails maybe working on some image recognition maybe thrown in some AI it's 2018 that makes sense I get it so you make improvements great you need to run an experiment and you need some guinea pigs so as the experiment is about to go live for your millions of guinea pigs or your 0.3% of users you whip up a nice little blog post that details everything that's about happen how will effect the site how long it will last maybe even toss that embedded YouTube video in there with people who are actively working on it because there are people whose livelihoods actually depend on changes on the site then in the creator studio in a new labs section or experimental features box or whatever you want to call it up at the top is this most recent one thumbnail experiments with a link to that blog post in the video for everyone to see and a box to uncheck if we want to opt out maybe even reward people for not opting out most people who just use YouTube casually don't really look into the creator studio so they're part of your experiment they're just gonna browse like normal boom that's your data collection that's everything but then there are youtubers who literally only upload custom thumbnails they rely on custom thumbnail some of them even pay for the creation of custom thumbnails for their Channel so they'll see this blog post and naturally go you know what I think I'm gonna opt out of this experiment that's obviously going to hurt my business and then at the end of the day thanks to the communication both sides everyone wins so just my point here YouTube is to err on the side of over communication especially with your creators I know it seems weird for a creator on YouTube to complain to YouTube but usually you've erred on the side of under communication and that's honestly the main crux of why people get disappointed or mad once in a while I'm sure you'll need to do some experiments where you need everyone involved and you can't opt out and you'll gray out that little box and it's just people will get mad just because that's the way they are but at least they'll know when it's over because the information is right there in the creator studio they check every day we just want to know we just want to feel like we are somewhat in control in some way and part of that is just knowing what's going on so I see you guys are YouTube's already adding all these useful actually really interesting thoughtful things to the creative studio beta I'm sure this would fit right in along with those things so that's it hopefully that sums up my point well maybe if you agree with me you can share this video feel free to share it with other creators or with people at YouTube for now that's been it thanks for watching talk to you the next one peace