YouTube is notoriously slow at implementing new features and solving critical problems – and it’s great at taking away essential features such as the dislike counter – but the video streaming service announced that its testing two new features that aim to improve the experience for users, and make it easier to jump through video sections. YouTube announced that it's adding a “Most replayed” graph to the video player, and revealed that it’s experimenting with a new way to skip through content with a new layout.
YouTube announced a few new updates yesterday (via 9to5Google) and announced a brand new feature finally coming to the platform. The “Most replayed” graph will help users identify parts of a video that has been watched the most times by other users. This should, in theory, help people find content that is relevant and most helpful, without needing to scrub through the entire video, or read the comments to find the best and most exciting parts.
YouTube "Most Replayed" feature
Source: YouTube
The new graph feature has been in the testing phase for some time, and it’s now rolling out more widely to both desktop and mobile users on all platforms.
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YouTube seek bar with a visual timeline
Source: YouTube, via 9to5Google
Another great new feature that YouTube announced to be trialing is a new way user interface to find interesting video moments. They work similarly to chapters. Whenever a user scrubs through the timeline, the seek bar will show the visuals and thumbnails of what’s happening at each part of the video. YouTube says that Premium subscribers will be able to test out the feature at YouTube.com/new, which used to be home to other features such as Picture-in-Picture (PiP) for iOS.
YouTube is slowly getting better, but it needs to hurry up in solving problems
It’s great to see that YouTube is finally adding genuinely useful features, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and we must not forget about the platform not doing enough to solve major issues. You may be tired of hearing this, but YouTube has a massive problem filtering the comments. The platform lets spam and bot accounts be created without a problem, and these can often impersonate verified users, and scam viewers out of their passwords, money, and other confidential information. Several content creators, including Marques Brownlee, Linus Sebastian from LTT, and other media outlets such as GSMArena have raised their concerns in the past; however, it seems like Google and YouTube constantly overlook and ignore it.
Source: YouTube
The fact that the platform decided to hide the dislike counter also raises a lot of red flags for viewers, making it harder to differentiate content that would otherwise waste people’s time by being vague and off-topic. I can’t even count how many times I have opened tutorial videos with clickbaity titles, promising to solve the solution, only to find out that it’s completely irrelevant from the headline. A simple dislike did not only leave a bad review for the uploader, but it also warned other users to watch out and not waste their time.
YouTube has a real problem, and until it can solve these problems, it will always have a bad reputation for doing too little too late for the content creator community, and those who regularly watch content on the platform.
YouTube is also constantly borrowing features from other platforms such as Twitch, Patreon, and others, which is a good thing. As a result, users can now donate premium memberships to other users during YouTube Live streams, and the membership is also likely going to receive a lot of enhancements in the near future to make it more appealing for hard-core fans and users to join and support their favorite creators. Like Twitch, YouTube gets a cut from all membership subscriptions, and it’s no surprise that the video streaming platform wants to make it popular and more appealing in the future to increase its profits, and offer a new way for content creators to make a living.
What do you think about the slow advancements and new features coming to YouTube? What do you think, how could YouTube solve the moderation problem? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!