10 reasons YouTube’s new Google+ comments really are a good thing

If any of you netizens have not heard of this apparently catastrophic news, YouTube comments are now handled by Google+. Yes I know, the horror, now catch your breath… settle down… it’s fine… really.

Here is the official post from the almighty Google (who own YouTube by the way — for some weird reason some people don’t know this).

The main jist of the update is:

• 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.

There is a video too:

You wouldn’t believe how upset users are about this. More than 90 000 people are petitioning YouTube to bring back the old comments system. The petition, hosted on Change.org, says Google is forcing users into creating accounts for a social network they don’t want to use with the new comments section.

Is it just me or is there a petition every time a major social network makes a change? Facebook gets these things by the bucket load when they so much as consider moving a pixel. How have none of these people noticed the social network company does not care about your petition. They thought these changes out, consulted experts, and invested time, money and resources to do it. They are not going to turn around and say: “Oh look, a fraction of our uses don’t like change. Oh well, worth a shot.”

I digress, back to the issue at hand. These Google+ comments, they are actually a truly good change to the notoriously venomous environment that is the YouTube comments space. I remember I read a joke once where if aliens ever saw YouTube comments as first contact, they would have more than enough reason to think we were a bunch of parasites and not to touch down on this blue planet or they might catch something.

So the move to Google+ is awesome for so many reasons, and here are just a few of them:

1. Less profanity! (I’m not being a prude here, it is really getting out of hand)
2. Meaningful discussion, not spam all over the place.
3. The comments that really matter to me are top, as in those I know (as within my circles) and the person who made the video.
4. I can comment publicly or privately (share my comments only with some of my Circles).
5. I can see who I’m talking to, I just hover over their name and up pops their Google+ profile card.
6. Mentioning people directly by their Google+ profiles and use hashtags which means they get a mail when I talk about them.
7. New comments left on my videos go directly to Google+ notification system — all in one place.
8. The video poster can easily moderate comments by block certain words and save time by auto-approving comments from certain people (read: trolls).
9. Nice big comments, no character limit (500 characters can be constricting in a rant).
10. Google Translate support for YouTube comments (overdue in my opinion).

(Disclosure: list inspired by Aygul Zagidullina)

This fine lady known on YouTube as iJustine gets it. She has 1.7-million people subscribed to her channel, so is a good representative of those who actually give a lot of their time and effort to their channel and followers.

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