YouTube just announced its newest feature and people have yet to decide whether it could do more harm than good for its subscribers. Now, YouTube is no longer just a video-sharing website. Today, it practically declared itself the newest social networking site online.
Just recently, there were news about YouTube vloggers complaining about the video-sharing site's poor execution of rules. Launching the YouTube Community feature might just be the company's way of saying sorry to avid subscribers.
YouTube has already addressed the issue of Vloggers' videos being flagged down and has been barring videos that make money from YouTube's ads. Sources suggest that YouTube's new policy is not entirely at fault for the censorship. The videos being barred is a result of a long-running skirmish between the video-sharing site's rules and implementation.
So if YouTube Community is not the platform's way of making amends, what is it for then?
In a statement written on YouTube's blogs, "Community is a special release for us because it represents the deepest product collaboration we've ever done with creators like you, YouTube said in its blog. "We started by inviting creators in early to develop, in partnership with us, the tools they wanted to better engage with their fans."
In that case, fans and their favorite YouTube personalities can directly mingle with each other unlike other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter where your favorite celebs won't respond to your messages or even see them. More importantly, are they really the ones we are talking to or is it a representative from their PR team? It is rather impersonal and that is what YouTube is trying to break.
With the new YouTube community tab, the video uploaded on the person's channel is not the only way to have a conversation with their subscribers. The newest YouTube feature allows the YouTube vlogger and followers to personally connect and have a conversation among themselves. An aspect that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are trying to promote as well but are having difficulty implementing.
As reported in Teen Vogue, YouTube Community was announced to be the video sharing site's efforts to become a social networking site. The publication wonders if Facebook feels threatened by Google's new feature. The verdict is that while YouTube is home to a lot of raw talented young artists and performers being discovered today, it still won't be able to catch up to the level that Facebook has built or established for themselves.
