YouTube is absolutely the business that is resting on laurels, just like Google Maps and Gmail. Sometime I wonder if these products have any real active development teams at all besides ads. YouTube massively screwed with users by forcing poorly executed botched migration to YouTube Music. Even outsiders can see that this was entirely internal Google politics which powerful people like Wojcicki should have been able to avoid but she didn't. It just makes me wonder if these billionaire leaders of Google products really care anymore about anything. There is visibly an utter lack of hunger at the top and these people clearly should have been spending more time with family leaving these products with more hungry minds. YouTube recommendations are crap and it's still amazing that in 2024 just clicking one video will fill up most of recommendations with same thing. It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins. TikTok took full advantage of this but YouTube CEO just kept napping at the wheel. Ultimately, the original product mostly just kept going but the measure of success is not about retaining audience but what it could have been if there was an ambitious visionary leader at the helm.
> It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins.
Why on Earth would you want shorter videos? The best thing about YouTube is that it's one of the only places you can find quality medium-to-long-form content.
Maybe not what the commenter was saying, but there is a difference between great multi-hour essays and pointless rants stretching out their length to meet a minimum ad requirement. I like watching a lot of multi hour videos, but you can tell the difference between one with substance and one repeating the same thing over and over so they can "clock out."
That's all due to changes by YouTube to reward length and frequency, which of course makes sense for maximizing their ad revenue. But the result is creators are incentivized to pump out 20-minute fluff videos, not well edited/written videos.
People on here complain about SEO sites being filled with meaningless garbage. That's what YouTube is starting to be. The difference is their search bar still works whereas Google's will only give you the garbage. Though I still get "such and such breaks down their career" even though I've never clicked on that.
I agree that there are a lot of inflated videos to hit some ad target. But the solution is not to encourage people to create short videos, or at the very least, not the way TikTok did, making it almost impossible to popularize anything longer than 3 minutes.
And despite all the dredge, there is a lot of good content on YouTube, at least in certain niches. Video essays on media and politics, lots of video-game analysis and other fan communities, history content, lots of e-sports to name just a handful that I personally enjoy.
Search is literally one of the things YouTube is poorer at than ever and it blows my mind. I get a handful of results that might be relevant and then it’s just pages and pages of completely unrelated content that has nothing to do remotely with my search.
I find it a small price to pay if a few videos are too long (you can usually tell within three minutes anyway), to have a platform that generally encourages 30 minute videos and even 3 hour videos that do have content.
There's almost no meaningful 3 minute content possible, so a platform like TikTok that only works for short videos is basically condemned to be meaning-less, to be pure entertainment.
Clearly the add-supported side, that likes to pad and pad and show more adds, is working against the premium/fee-supported side, that wants to maximise value and engagement.
Premium subscribers should be able to give feedback on a video's density IMHO...
Length is shown in the thumbnail. Too long, no click, less views. I also wouldn't be surprised if the recommendation algo uses premium status as an input
Why on earth would you watch a 1.5 hour movie when you can watch a 2 min TikTok that explains the entire story?
In a world full of distractions I for one love the more slow-paced videos than “shorts” churned out by content mills designed to feed the modern day digital ADHD…
Few years ago “long burn” story telling was hot and we are still feeling the effects. Take any show on Netflix and it will be 8 45min episodes from which first 3 are absolutely garbage filler.
Youtube learned the wrong lesson and started to optimize the algorithm for retention and length. It is annoying to click for a review of some product that looks like a lengthy one with probably tests and what not only to see painfully slow unboxing and a wikipedia read of the history of the product and company and then sponsor read and then they turn on the device for a minute and give arbitrary score.
Exact same info could have been communicated in 30seconds, but then they wouldn’t get sponsor money and mid video ad roll
I beg to disagree. I don’t watch movies to “get information”. I watch movies (and long form YouTube videos) to be entertained. Why travel places? You can look up photos and videos online and get the same “information”.
YouTube videos were originally limited to 5 or 10 minutes I think. And probably 480p or so. You have to remember when it started, video on mobile didn't exist and there was absolutely no bandwidth for it. So people watching YouTube were watching it on their PC, probably with a 1024x768 CRT screen, and that's assuming they had something faster than dial-up internet.
Oh, I do remember, I was around in the early days. I think (but maybe that came later?) longer form videos did exist, but only paying accounts could post them.
