YouTube changing the rules ... again

Youtube has come a long way since 2005, and is now facing that mid - life crises which recently hit Facebook: reinventing itself, namely. Money. In the case of Facebook they got a serious rap on the knuckles for wanting to hold on to commercially valuable personal information pertaining to users, and backed down. In the case of Youtube, it's more in - your - face, or perhaps, in you 'interface'.

These new 2.0 'Beta' channels are crap. Hopefully the delay in implementing them is a reflection of some serious second - thoughts on the part of Youtube ... I really hope so. Lots of people have lots of different complaints, but as someone who is not heavy into the 'Director' end of Youtube I have to say there's one really annoying aspect to the whole thing which jumps out straight away.

Once upon a time, you hit on a user and see that they have nothing but favourites. No problem. With these new 'Beta' channels being forced on everyone, we now have the latest 'favourite' being given the same prominence as someone having uploaded a video of their own. You see video first, favourite second as opposed to favourite first and video second. This dilutes the creativity of getting off your ass and making a video.

I accept that youtube has to make money: no such thing as a free lunch and all of that. What I don't understand is why they seemingly don't understand phased development. Roll things out gradually, get a consensus, and mould it into a commercially viable system rather than using the sledgehammer approach. While Youtube has to make money, they also need to keep an eye on the fact that without users, there's no advertising revenue - in other words, money.

This is not the first Youtube weirdness cloudburst. I recently put together a 16 minute video. I thought it would be fine to upload, because I had taken a look and saw videos up to 30 minutes on there. Not so. Under the "Grandfather rule" Youtubers who joined before a certain date can upload long videos, but more recent Youtubers can't for copyright infringement reasons. Therefore all older Youtube users do not abuse copyright, and new ones do. Makes sense ... on second thoughts, no it doesn't.

It strikes me that Youtube, in the middle of it's arrogance, would do well to remember it's a fad. It will pass. In the late 1990's, Napster ruled the world. Ask most kids now what Napster is, and they'll probably shrug and say something like "an online retailer of nappies?" Remember that, youtube!