My thoughts on the end of annotations
3I've never made a video like this before. But now that Youtube has nuked the ability to add annotations to videos I want to voice my opinion in video form.
I don't get many views because what I do is pretty niche and isn't going to garner much attention outside of a few interested people. But I enjoy making videos. I mainly do this for myself. And I do hope that someday the information that I've provided might be useful. I'm not going to be a Youtube millionaire or a big name e-celeb. I'm just a regular person making videos about messing around with old video games. I don't have anything to sell or promote. I'm not asking for money in exchange for content. I'm one of many many content creators who do that. And a lot of us still used annotations. They were especially useful to gamers.
Adding information, tips and instructions via annotations is a very important aspect to video creation for a lot of us. You can't do that with cards. And annotations were a lot easier to manage than having to edit all that info into the video prior to uploading. What if you made a mistake or want to add something new? You can't reupload a new version of your video to the same URL. You can't really update your video without uploading it to a different one. In fact, I made a typo in the credits and had to reupload! The irony!
Now that we have less options because the so-called replacement for annotations is way less diverse in how it can be used, I feel like I will have a harder time making videos the way that I want to make them. And I know I'm not the only one. I don't think this video will change Youtube's mind. It's just me voicing my opinion on the matter.
I liked that annotations could be turned off. That way if you didn't want to see them you didn't have to. I don't have a mic and even if I did, do you really want to hear someone talking over a game all the time? That can get annoying. I'm not doing full LP's. My videos don't need voiced commentary.
I really liked being able to add comments and info on the fly from the annotations menu. But now that I can't I'll have to figure something else out. Is Youtube aware that a lot of people don't bother reading the video descriptions? We want what we're trying to convey to be on the actual video. And we want an easy way to edit that via Youtube.
I honestly don't care if annotations don't work on mobile. I mainly use a desktop. as I said in the video, some things just don't work on mobile. That's just the way it is. But Youtube should have had this in the bag before killing annotations. As it stands now Youtube isn't really offering an alternative. They're just pushing the new system when the new system actually offers less in terms of how it can be used. If the fact that they didn't work on mobile was such an issue why not find a way to make them work? I have head that it's to do with Flash. Well why not develop a version that doesn't need it?
Whatever the problem is, I think that taking away something that nearly half the user base can still view (according to Youtube 40% of views are not mobile) seems rather unfair and not very user friendly.
Youtube claims that creators said annotations were hard to add. And that people tend to close them without clicking them. Well, not all annotations are links to things. What about commentary? At least give us cards that are for that very purpose.
You can read more about Youtube's reasoning here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7342737?visit_id=1-636305007684579166-2377511864&p=keep_fans_engaged&rd=1
See what you think. I know what i'm thinking.
Well that's it. I hope I got the timing right in the video. I read fast so I had a hard time judging other people's read speed. XD
I thought that Action 52 music was very fitting for Youtube's latest blunder. Although I actually like this track and Bubblegum Rosy is one of the best games in the collection. Although that's not saying much, is it?