Video reply / response

[anubis2814]

This may well be the worst place to post this, but I don't know where to direct this.

Video responses were one of the things that made youtube a community. It was also a way for smaller youtubers to gain subscribers. Once youtube killed it, whole communities collapsed. I've been looking for a platform for years with a video response option, and I know lots of people from varying communities on youtube that would probably switch to peertube if there was a video response option.

Also you guys are probably already working on this but peertube needs better filtering by language for discover, trending and recently added. Maybe a filter option for all languages or just your native language if you feel like it. It really makes it hard to discover everything if most of it is in languages you don't know.

If you have another place I can post this on, please let me know, I don't want to clog up a site that is much more specific to actual problems.

[Nutomic]

Could you explain how video responses (used to) work on Youtube?

[robinlahtinen]

On the comment section there is a button “Submit video response”, that would open a list of your uploaded videos and you select one and send it.

http://www.onespoonatatime.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/video-response-2.jpg

[anubis2814]

I think that sums it up, let us know if you have other questions. They killed the function because they wanted to make youtube a celebrity place as opposed to a community of small timers. I was gaining around 1k subs per year. Then in I think 2013 they killed it and in the past 5 years I've gained 1k while posting at the exact same rate if not more. Most of my fellow community members experienced the same thing making them give up youtubing entirely. Now its go big and flashy and make lots of money or go home.

[rigelk]

@robinkooli @anubis2814 I have a few questions, to better understand the flow of actions related to video responses (or UX): are videos responses also possible to respond to a comment? Are they moderated differently from regular comments? Are they published along with a message/comment?

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On another note, I found back something that looks like the announcement made to retire the functionality:

[…] replacing little-used features with better ones. Currently video responses have a click-through rate of .0004% -- in other words, only 4 out of every 1 million users who sees a video response clicks on it. So, on September 12 we’re going to retire this little-used feature as we work to develop more effective fan engagement tools for creators. The team is focused on enabling you to share video links in comments. Doing this in comments will let creators and viewers add more context to a video, and more context should drive more engagement.

Not saying we should also care about the click rate like Google does. But that coud hint us toward making a better use of previews in comments, or showing embeds for comments that have a link to a video.

[anubis2814]

No they are not a responce to comments, they are regulated just like comments, They are not published with a message or comment.

[anubis2814]

I also think it depends on how people use it. Our community wasa tiny fraction of the internet, but we used the hell out of it. If it was just comedy videos or cat or fail videos most people were on there for then they already had suggested playlists in the sidebar, if they were looking for something specific or community engagement it was a very useful tool. It allowed for back and forth conversations or discussions on topics, and boosting other people's subs in the process. It was much more acedemic and much less entertainment and as youtube became more of a big entertainment platform especailly adding every music video in existance, 4 in 1 million sounds about right. We just became a tiny unprofitable market even though at the beginning we made up a sizable chunk of their viewership

[anubis2814]

Also they are discussing all video responses ever posted on the site. Video responses were parts of conversations, as time progressed and the discussion had died down and less people watched the older videos, people got less and less likely to click through. 8 years worth of millions of video responses and only the most recent stuff got click through its no wonder they got that number. Perhaps to save space we could delete all video responses older that 6 months-1yr. People were looking for the most recent responses, they had little interest in old responses, So google seemed to be clueless as to what video responses were for, had tons more non-community based videos than they had ever had before and video responses become less and less used the older the original video got.