YouTube Keeps Testing Features That Change How Viewers Find You

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We break down two YouTube experiments that could change how viewers navigate the app and how creators earn early momentum. We also zoom out into what these UI tests say about control, recommendations and the mental game of posting on YouTube.
• Subscriptions tab moving from bottom nav to a top tab on mobile
• How UI changes can spike or crater feature usage
• Why initial velocity still ties to subscriber behavior
• The subscription feed becoming less chronological and more algorithmic
• DMs and “invite to chat” showing up inside Subscriptions
• YouTube’s push toward all-in-one community features
• Shorts testing a missing dislike button and a heart icon
• Why dislike signals matter for personalization and scam detection
• Better intros by watching retention graphs and viewer intent
• Avoiding the YouTube Studio refresh spiral after upload
leave a comment below. Let us know what you think about the the the like button being changed and of course the subscription tab being moved on mobile.
Make sure you hit that subscribe button, like button. If you're listening to an audio podcast, there will be a link in the show notes to take you over here where you can do the same.

Transcript

The Last Bit Of Viewer Control

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The subscription tab represents the last shred of that on YouTube where you have some level of control over what you're seeing. I hate to tell everyone this, but YouTube is for viewers. We just happen to be giving them content. YouTube is more interested in viewers than they are about creators.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Red alert, YouTube is removing the subscription button on mobile. YouTube is not removing the subscription button on mobile, they are moving it.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hey,

Welcome Back And The Real Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:21

welcome back to the OnlyPodcast that brings back old podcast co-host, just cuz I'm Travis, and I'm here today with Dan. Welcome back to the show. Dan, it's been a minute.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Uh yeah, sorry, I'm a bit rattled. Calling me old like that just before we even start is like really kind of a choice.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

It is a choice. It's a choice I've made. If you're new here, we do things like this sometimes where we talk about YouTube news. Normally I talk to content creators, we find out how they grow, but today we're gonna talk about things that YouTube is doing and how you can uh leverage those, hopefully, uh to your advantage. So let's get into it. Let's just

Subscription Tab Move On Mobile

SPEAKER_00 0:54

not even mess around. Um, and Dan came up with a couple things that he had seen recently. I'm gonna share my screen. So if you're listening to the audio only podcast, it's probably gonna be a little bit more impactful if you go to the YouTube video, and you'll there'll be a link in the show notes for this. But apparently, and YouTube does these experiments all the time, and we were talking about this off the air. Um, and this is a kind of scary experiment, and I'm showing a nine to five Google here, where YouTube removes a dedicated subscriptions tab from the mobile test in a mobile app in a new test. And the screenshot here, um, which I'm gonna show, it is confusing because it looks like an ad, shows that if you have the mobile app open, uh, this looks like maybe iOS or it might be Android, um, you usually at the bottom it says home and then shorts, and then there's a little plus for create, and then there's subscriptions. We're all used to this. If you've used um the the the app on your phone, that's what it looks like. Well, in this new test, and again, if you're watching uh on YouTube, you'll see this. Uh, they have removed the subscription tab on the bottom and have moved it to the top. I'm in some ways, like this shouldn't be super impactful because most people don't get their views from some from subscribers, but your initial velocity, almost not exclusively, but pretty darn near comes from your subscription tab, especially in the first couple of hours. Talk to us about what you think about this when you see this.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

So, a lot of people, when I saw this pop up in my feed, said, Hey, Red Alert, YouTube is removing the subscription button on mobile. They didn't say that it was moving, they said they were removing it. And because the way you frame it is like, well, that was just UI change. What's the big deal? And that's what I'm asking myself now when I actually see the story with the screenshots. I'm not as panicked about this as I was when I first saw this hit my feed, and that's why I wanted to talk about it because I feel like either A, the story isn't fully up to date, or B, people are doing what they do on the internet, which is like they read the headline and they regurgitate the headline and they make their video and they move on, and they don't dig deep enough. So YouTube is not removing the subscription button on mobile, they are moving it. So if you go on your channel, you've probably noticed, or any channel, you've probably noticed there's tabs, there's home and videos and podcasts, and now it kind of looks like that on mobile. There's now a home tab and a subscriptions tab. And so seeing it like this in the screenshot, I don't have this, I'm not in the test group, but seeing it like this, I gotta say, I'm kind of curious about it. I almost kind of prefer it because I never click that button at the bottom of the screen, yet I subscribe to channels all the time because I want to be notified of the things they're making.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

It puts so here's the thing about um UI moot changes. I know this just as a tech nerd and having worked with companies that have uh devices that have a user interface. When you make changes like this, one of two things happens. Either usage goes up or usage completely craters and goes down. And what that means for our content creator means it's possible that you might not get as many views from the subscribe tab as you used to. Generally speaking, that doesn't matter too much because if you look at the analytics of your own channel, you'll notice that you don't get that many views from that. But the reality is actually more nuanced because things like um the collab feature, which I have been talking about for a while now, like how much I love, doesn't exclusively use a subscription feed, but does get a lot of its views from the subscription feed of the channel you are collabed with. So if this move to the top is bad for people clicking it, then it would be bad for a lot of things. So I'm unsure if this is actually a problem or not. Again, I am worried that moving it will change people's usage of it, but it might be a plus. Like moving it to the top might just be easier to use. What do you think if you were if if you use this? Do you think it's gonna be easier for you to use?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Uh so I can only speak to me personally. I I don't use the mobile app like everybody does because, for example, you mentioned the plus button at the bottom. Right now it's at the bottom middle of the app. There are a lot of people who wear that button out because they make their content on their phone. So they use YouTube's create features built into the mobile app. I don't use those. So there's already now a couple buttons that I don't pay attention to at the bottom of my bar on mobile. I hit the you button a lot. I'm always clicking my profile icon and looking at my history and my uh my watch later playlist, especially. And I look at the shorts button sometimes, but I've been trying not to click that as much. So seeing the subscriptions tab at the top makes me wonder if people will notice it more. Because to me, a few of those buttons are kind of invisible. But having it right under the search bar is kind of interesting, and it makes me wonder if people will see it up there, at least at first, maybe they'll tap it more often to see what their subscriptions are up to. It really is, to me, people kind of panicking about something that isn't fully realized yet. And, you know, they're gonna get their data. We don't know what YouTube wants to see. Do they want to see people going there more or less? I don't know. But for the viewers, I do wonder if this means people go to that tab more and frequent it more because it's a it's a button at the very top of the app, right under the YouTube icon, and it's you know, it's it wasn't there before. I think those little chips are pretty invisible too, the ones that say all in new to you and music. I never click those, but a tab, and the way it's designed, the UI design is is indicative of the whole app is about to swipe over and gonna look it's gonna look completely different if you tap this button. It's more of a jarring kind of change, right? So I'm really curious to see what happens, and I'm more and I'm more encouraged by this test than I am scared of it. What I'm more upset about with the subscription tab is the more recent, no, the less recent change of it's an algorithm now. That's why I'm mad about the subscription tab. They want to move it around and make it more or less clickable. That's one thing. It's less useful now because it's not in reverse chronological order, it's whatever YouTube thinks I'm gonna like. It's like, no, we have that already. It's called the home feed. Give me my subscription tab the way I had it. I want to filter it the way I want to filter it. And I really think I should be able to opt out of that automatic like algorithm that they put in there.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And to be clear, we may never see this. So this is a test, and and YouTube does this all the time. And they're actually doing a test on on my channel. Damn and I were talking about this before we got started, where on the on the desktop feed, um, when you click uh content, it now shows instead of like the video views, the date, the likes, and the views and stuff, it's showing like how much money the video made and it removes the likes. We'll talk about likes here in a minute. But I just wanted to point out that sometimes you'll see these tests happen. Some people will get them, and then they never roll out. Um, so we don't want to cause panic if someone goes, oh my gosh, now subscriptions are uh, you know, they're gone forever or they're gonna be hard to find. That again, A, it might be better, and they usually only roll out things if it's better for the user experience. And B, you may just never see this. Like this just might be something that is never seen.

DMs And Social Features Return

SPEAKER_01 7:37

And guess what else they added to the subscription tab that uh is currently there for me, which means you might have it too. And I'm surprising you with this right now because I just have I just wanted to tab over there to see if those filters existed as I was running my mouth. Yeah there's a new button, and if you tap it, you can now invite your friends to chat. This is something that they've talked about doing for a while. Yep, they they've officially added the DMs back into the app, and it's in your subscription tab. So this makes me wonder if you need to be subscribed to a channel to even invite them to chat in the first place. Maybe you both have to be subscribed to each other. I haven't tested this yet, but uh that's now you can send mine.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Says now you can send uh videos right on YouTube invite to chat. Each link can start one chat. So you kind of have to be connected with the person. I so what I don't think this is is the original DMs that uh YouTube used to have. Like that's not those were a wild west, those were crazy. Um, and for people who are newer, not only did they have that, they had video responses to comments. We've kind of gone back with the voice, you know, responses to comments, which you can do in mobile now, which is cool. Uh, but used to be able to do videos, and this was another thing, um, DMs. So this is like dipping their toe back into some type of messaging platform. Because I think they just want people to be on YouTube and be able to do everything on YouTube and communicate everything on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

And and that is that is like I'm pointing that out in the subscription tab is like a way to say, like, hey, if you're worried that they're gonna get rid of it altogether, don't be, because they have to have it, they have to have that button somewhere, and it makes a lot of sense to have it in your subscription tab. So I think they're just trying to to me seeing the UI change now, subscriptions is more visible to me than having it at the bottom. That's just a personal preference. And seeing the chat button in there makes me feel like maybe we're gonna see some updates, some positive updates to the subscription tab. I definitely want to try out this chat feature, maybe with a couple friends, just to see how it works. Because Discord is doing some things I don't like. I would love to have, you know, if I'm talking, if everyone I'm talking to is on YouTube anyway, I'd love to like have another way to reach them. That'd be kind of nice. Uh, but it in any case, this is very interesting because the community tab now has the community section where your community can post images and stuff on your community tab. So that's another Reddit Discord kind of feature. And now we have this DM thing, and now they're moving stuff around on the app to perhaps make it easier to find this stuff. So it's difficult, man. It's difficult to take one app and make it do a thousand things, and YouTube is is battling that right now.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Well, the the interesting thing about this is that uh YouTube and Google as a company who owns YouTube uh tend to test a lot of different things, but then end up murking them if they don't do well. So there's like there's even a website that like has all the different companies and projects that uh Google has ever made and then just you know killed them. I you know what I used to love that they used to have was uh YouTube stories. I used to love them. Great way to get tons of views and really cool uh engagement, but they they remove uh you know YouTube stories because you know Instagram had stories where they tried that. So if they if they put something out that doesn't work, they will quickly remove it. Uh and I don't and I I feel like these type of things, uh UI changes, they go through a lot of tests before we ever see them in the wild. Um, so there must have been something positive to begin with to even get it to this point. And I know that the worry is gonna be, oh, but now that you know they're trying to make subscribers even less um uh relevant, which I'm not going to deny. I think that that's part of the game. I've said for years to not be surprised when there's more and more platforms in which you watch YouTube where you won't be able to tell how many subscribers a channel has, or how many views even uh a channel has, a video has.

Control Versus The Home Algorithm

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Because I think YouTube wants to be able to tell you what you're going to like. And in fairness, they're pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Let me put on my Tim Foyle hat for a second. All right. Because I agree with you. I agree that YouTube wants to YouTube wants you to get on the app and they want you to just kind of sit there drooling all over your shirt with your phone in your hand, and they will serve you all the things that you want to see and you don't have to think. And that is, I think, their version of an ideal world where someone can open their app and get really lost in it for a really long time because it's so good at picking the perfect content. But here's what I'm noticing, and this is gonna go off on a bit of a tangent, but I'll try and wrap it back around. So, subscription services have gotten out of control. Everyone's paying all this money to watch TV and movies, and they're like, well, wait a minute. Like, this costs more than cable to back in the day. I can't afford all these subscriptions. What can I do? Well, I guess I can watch like binge watch some stuff and cancel that subscription, go to another one and binge watch that and cancel that, or I could take control of my media and get a Plex server going and buy my movies and stuff and like really and hold on to the things I really care about and have control, like the word control being the primary thing here. That's how I'm I'm buying Blu-rays like nuts now because I am so tired of my favorite movies and series moving around to different streaming services. So I want to reclaim ownership of that stuff. I want control of the things I watch. And as these companies do more and more things to take away that control, I feel like a switch flips in people where they weren't noticing it at first, and now they are, and they're like, but I some people, not everybody, but some people are like, I like having control over my subscriptions, I like having control over my movies, I like having control over the things that I want to see, I like browsing for a while and scrolling on the app to try and find the perfect video. I don't need you to kind of pick for me. And the subscription tab represents the last shred of that on YouTube where you have some level of control over what you're seeing. If you're on desktop, there's extensions you can do that'll completely nerf YouTube's algorithm. And I don't like those. I still like discovering new creators with an algorithm, but I also like getting online and seeing if a few specific people have uploaded a video recently. So I think there is a world where if the the very wise people over at YouTube pick up on this trend of having two different sides of the coin, right? People who like control and people who don't mind being served stuff, you could see them trying to have that have their cake and eat it too. Here's a subscription tab where you have more control. I would love some filters, YouTube. And here's the home tab. We're gonna default to the home tab because most of you use that, but we'll make the subscription tab a bit more meaningful to you. That's listen, I'm being way too positive here for our audience. I'm sure people are like, no, no, no, this is a this is a this is a ploy to get rid of it completely. I history would show that you're right. But if I'm to try to like follow the trends of the world right now in terms of media, I I didn't want to run a Plex server. I didn't want to run a server in my house for myself. I but I did, I set one up because I just got that sick and tired of not having zero control over what I watch. And that will reverberate as a user now. I'm thinking about that for all things, for the games I play, for the videos I watch on the internet. So I would love it if the subscription tab became more a part of how I use the app. And if this brings me to do that, cool. If it does become more invisible, then I guess I'll have my answer. But right now, the way this design is being shown to me on the internet in its current testing phase, I as a just my personal preference is I like this button where it is now. But not everyone agrees.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Well, so here's the thing. I I typically watch my content either on TV or on desktop. And I've noticed something about my viewing habits recently, or maybe it's even over the past half a year, maybe close to a year at this point. I used to exclusively watch YouTube through my subscription tab. Almost exclusively, like very few uh home feed videos back in the day. But I'm noticing now that I rarely go to my subscription feed anymore, which was something that YouTube has been talking about for a couple of years, that like most people go on the homepage, 70% of all views come through the homepage, which you know is obviously true. Um, but my own watching habits have changed, which is really interesting, especially as someone who understands the system and maybe was even pushing against some aspects of it, that it's like, darn, it's just better if I don't use the subscription feed for some things. Now, if I want to check on a uh uh, you know, a channel I'm subscribed to that I don't see coming through the homepage, obviously will. I'm like, oh, I haven't heard from that channel. Well, let me just go take a look at it. But again, I think that at the end of the day, this probably isn't going to affect too many people. I am interested to see how it will affect the collaboration tool, which I think has been one of the better tools they've released in the last couple of years. Um, I think it will directly affect that. We'll have to see to what degree though. And if they do this on the on the um television app and like the desktop, they do something similar, then I mean, which they do all the time, they move stuff all the time. Uh, I'd be a little bit more concerned maybe then. Uh but speaking of like moving and removing things, that's not the only thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

But no, but I'm not done though. Oh, well, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Spit your games. Spit your game.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

I was just gonna say, I was gonna ask you, have you ever been on the YouTube app and you see a video that you want to watch? And maybe you pull your thumb down a little too much and it refreshes the page before you can click on it.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

I get all types of weird missed touch things, uh, even just on phones nowadays, period. Like it's that's why I try not to watch YouTube and stuff on mobile devices. I just don't get as much enjoyment out of it. Especially if I want to rewind or fast forward something. You know, I have a big problem with that.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, that that can also be frustrating. So I've had that where I pull my thumb down a little bit and like, wait, I wanted to, and it goes it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Or I scroll down, like maybe I'll come back to that and I'm gonna shop around a little bit first. So I'll scroll down a little bit and no, no, I want to watch that other thing, but I pull up too fast and that refreshes the page. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My point is that's another reason to have the subscription tab because if I'm subscribed to that channel, it's uh who was even that person? I don't even remember which channel that was. Oh, I'll just go to my subscription tab and you're there. It still happens if you're not subscribed to them and then you'll lose that video and it's not your watch history, and there's no way to get it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had that.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

But what I do, and I talked to Jen about this like a year or so ago, and she thought it was crazy, but I I found out through the comments a lot of people do this. I I do go uh video shopping. So I'll be on my homepage, I'll find something, I'll open it in a new tab, and I'll keep going. I'll find it and open a new tab so that when I'm done doing my shopping, I just go to tab to tab to tab. Do you do that? I've done that, yeah. See, all right on desktop, yes. Yeah, on desktop, yeah. You can't do it on mobile, right? I mean, I guess you can add it to a playlist to watch later, but it's not the same.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

I do watch later a lot. My watch later playlist is massive. Uh, I I use that feature so much. And recently they made it harder to find, and I was really mad, and then they made it easy to find again. So I think they're just testing stuff. But uh yeah, I really love the watch later feature.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

I use it constantly. Conceptually, it's a good idea. I feel like the execution is always the part that kind of trips me up. Um, but again, when we talk about changes that YouTube is making, um, there's another one, apparently. Or at least

Shorts Losing Dislike And Why

SPEAKER_00 18:07

again, they're testing. And again, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see it. If you're listening to the audio podcast, uh, I'm showing a screenshot. It says, Is your YouTube Shorts dislike button missing? And with some screenshots here. So this first screenshot is what most people are used to seeing on YouTube Shorts. You see the thumbs up button, the thumbs down for dislike, the comment number, a share, and then whatever the remix button. This new experiment shows that it's a heart button instead of like a thumbs up. It's more heart like you'll see on Instagram and stuff. And then a comment, there's no dislike at all, which for me is confusing because one of the things YouTube always tells us is most of the recommendations are personalization. So when you hit thumbs down, it's not so much to make that video uh fall out in the overall YouTube algorithm, it's that it's supposed to not show you as much stuff. It's more about personalization, what you like and don't like. So what I'm assuming they're thinking here is this is just a doubling down if you like something. And if you don't like it, you're just swiping away anyway. And they're just saying the thumbs down portion maybe isn't significant enough for them to even use it, but the implication is much bigger. Like when you see this, what do you think, Dan? This is this is a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Uh, I mean, and yeah, there's a few things to talk about on the subject. I I don't like it. I like less buttons. I'll say that. The YouTube Shorts and TikTok is like this too. There's too much, too many UI elements when you're watching stuff on on the on vertical formats. Um, so I like less buttons, but this is not what I would have chosen. Uh, someone on the article was joking and saying maybe they should get rid of that remix button no one uses. And I know people, there are people who use that and stuff, but I I don't. I agree. Um I ever since YouTube removed the dislike counter, at first, like the public one, at first I thought, okay, if people are using it as a bully, maybe this is like a good idea. And now that we're in 2026 and there's so much misinformation going around and people are there's a lot of trickery going around on YouTube, I really miss the dislike counter, the public dislike counter. And there's a story I just watched a video about last night where people have been making YouTube videos of Minecraft mods, but the Minecraft mods are very malicious. They are actually like viruses hackers are using to get into your system. So they make a YouTube video. The YouTube video looks like it's getting some traction. The mod is linked in the description, and it actually is a virus. Now, back in the day, if you had the dislike counter, you would have seen that this video is getting a lot of dislikes for some reason. At a glance, you wouldn't even have to click on the video, and you would know that something's up with this video, and you could decide for yourself, maybe look in the comments or whatever if you're gonna follow it. We don't have that anymore. We have the number of likes, and all we can do is discern relative to the ratio of views to likes whether or not this video is doing okay. And there's plugins that try and track dislikes, but they're not accurate. So people feel like they need this feature now, and in a world where we're like, hey, we could kind of use some better tools to kind of suss things out, they're getting rid of another dislike option. And I don't like that. Plus, if you read the article, it tells you that the dislike button is still there, but you have to click the three dots. If I click the three dots in a short, I'm not clicking dislike, I'm clicking don't show me this channel again. That's the only reason I go up there. If I see something I really that I find abhorrent, I go up there and I say never show me this again. The dislike button isn't gonna do that. It is going to, like you said, I looked this up before the show, that does seem to be the consensus. If you hit dislike, especially on YouTube music, it's like this, but uh supposedly videos too. You hit dislike, it shows you kind of less of that thing. I don't know if it means from that creator or just that type of content, but whatever. Why do why why get rid of this? I if that's where we're moving, I'm a bit sad. I know other platforms don't have it, but other platforms aren't YouTube. I think YouTube has done a really good job of democratizing a lot of content creation across the board. And I think doing things to make themselves less unique is not the play. You should you should embrace the the things that make you unique. If TikTok doesn't have dislikes and Instagram doesn't have dislikes, and I don't I'm not on there enough to know, but I I guess they don't. Embrace the dislikes. You know, if people are using them to bully, we have reporting tools for that. We kind of need those now. You've given us all the tools in the world to trick people with, you know, uh deep fakes and everything else. Like we kind of need them now.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

I'm I'm guessing. And I this is a guess. I'm just gonna I don't have any information about this, but I just know how like companies like YouTube work when it comes to this sort of thing. It probably isn't being used that much. It's probably that people aren't hitting dislike as much as they are in long form and they're just swiping past it. Um, it's small on the screen, first of all, right? Like you, you know, you gotta find it and dislike it, whatever. My guess is that the major signal they're using is the swipe away metric that we do get to see. Like, how long are they watching this thing? And if they swipe away, they probably didn't like it. And that's a more powerful signal than a dislike and then a swipe. Because if you don't like something, you gotta hit dislike and then swipe it. Like, I don't, I'm not saying that they they should get rid of it. I'm just trying to figure out why they would have done it. And that to me makes sense. It's like they they want to declutter it as much as possible, and if for sure they want to make it easier for the for the viewer, because I I hate to tell everyone this, but YouTube is for viewers. We just happen to be giving them content. YouTube is more interested in viewers than they are about creators. That's just the way it is. They it's not that they don't care about creators, but they care more about viewers, and we should as well let the be clear, we should care about viewers as well, because if the viewers aren't here, your creators aren't here either. Um, yeah, I I I I'm unsure how I feel about this, but there's probably data behind it. The question is, will this roll out? And this is another thing. If it does roll out, there will definitely be pushback. And then does YouTube back down? That's the real question. Because they have backed down in the past on things, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I do think because the counter is hidden anyway, there's part of me that argues back and forth. It's like, okay, I'm saying we need the dislike counter because we need to know if videos are tricking people or whatever. There's no room for that on shorts as it is. So you're right. Like, if this is exclusive to shorts, because I'm falling a little bit for the fear trap of like, what if it goes away on long form videos? There's no indication it will. So if it's exclusively for shorts, I can kind of see that. But I would argue keep the dislike button, bring back the dislike counter, and keep it right, just like you can see how many likes are on a video, put the little number of dislikes right under that video. And I'm because here's the thing: some people are really, really good at getting your attention. So you swipe to a video and you decide very quickly if you're gonna keep watching it or not. Well, if someone who's really, really good at holding your attention has bad intentions, it's kind of nice to have that extra signal sitting right there on the side saying, Hey, uh, I watched this whole video and I didn't like it because something really bad happens, or it's trying to trick you into giving them your crypto wallet or whatever. So my argument, I guess, goes a step beyond the problem, which is they're hiding this dislike button. I'm like, I'm I'm going full reverse. Bring the dislike counter back and keep the dislike button. If they're not willing to do that, then yes, I suppose you may as well take your swipe data, have the heart there. Because if you heart a video and let's say you watch the whole thing, that's a strong signal you liked it. If you heart a video, that's a very strong signal you liked it. I feel the same way about dislikes. If you're swiping away, that's a really strong signal that you did not like what you watched. It's even stronger if you took the time to tell them I hated this. That's true. It's a good point. So I don't know. If that signal is not helping anybody, but if it's helping my personal recommendation feed, if that's if that's again coming back to control, if that's the way I can control my recommendations a little bit in shorts, then I kind of like having it. But if YouTube is putting the heart sit there saying we're not really paying attention to that anyway, then sure. Okay, if it's an empty UI element, then fine. But I don't know. So as you can see, my feelings are a bit mixed. Um, I'm I'm fully back on the bandwagon of bring back the dislike counter. That's where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

And and people want that. I mean, they still have one of that. I don't think we're gonna get it because you know, I I I you know, and I think about it, like Netflix did this before YouTube did. For some, and I still to this day don't understand why Netflix did it because I it's a pay service. So for those who don't remember, once upon a time, you could see like the like-dislike kind of ratio on YouTube video or sorry, Netflix videos on Netflix, and it made me it kept me from watching shows that I wouldn't have wanted to watch. But is it fair? I don't know, because those are different genres and stuff. So maybe they're thinking, well, we're still gonna show you what we think you like. Just because a bunch of other people didn't like it doesn't mean you won't. But the fact they took it away was confusing to me. And I feel like it gave permission to like YouTube to go, you know what, you guys can do the same thing. Uh, we're just gonna do it and people are gonna deal with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

But Netflix, like, it's a paid service, but it's also gate kept from a content perspective. I can't upload a Netflix video, you know. It's it's heavily gate kept. So it is a bit weird because people people get their reviews of TV shows and movies from different sources than you know, a quick little counter. So I because I never clicked those buttons. Also, I watch Netflix on TV a lot and I don't interact with a lot of UI elements on TV, so that could be part of it. So they were seeing data where people aren't using it, but it's because of the it's more because of the format, not because the button was necessarily bad. But yeah, um, that it could be. It could be YouTube saying, well, we we're better than Netflix because we get more views. So they don't have a dislike button, we don't need one either. It could be.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Yeah, I I we'll see what happens again. This might not roll out at all. I I think it's like one of the things that um we just can't get too up in arms about. We can definitely voice our opinions, and I think it's probably a good thing to do. But uh, I mean, don't don't be surprised if you never see this thing roll out because so often that's the case. Um, I also just wanted to talk about uh one or two things going on uh in YouTube in general. We've had a

Stronger Intros With Retention Data

SPEAKER_00 27:42

couple of videos we posted on the main vid IQ channel. I just want to talk about just one of them, just for the people that are uh new to YouTube and trying to grow their channels, might be a little bit helpful. Um, you did a video with uh like the eight habits to uh that small channels get wrong and it kills their channel. And I just want to talk about a couple of those things. One of them, because we literally just had a meeting about this, uh, is introing your video. And it's such an interesting dynamic as to what where people land on this. Um I think most people agree that if you sit there at the beginning of the video and you go, hey everybody, welcome. My name is John, and I've been doing this for six years. And remember last time when I was here, when you were here, I did all the you weren't here last time. So um we do something different here on the podcast channel where we get the stinger in the beginning, uh where we show different uh clips of what has happened during the episode so you know what you're getting into. And then I do a little intro of the creator so that you understand who they are, because you might be coming in thinking, oh, this sounds like an interesting topic, but I don't know who this person is. So then I will introduce them that way. Um, but you know, for long form, for something that's like 40 minutes or so long, sometimes you can get away with that. Uh for short form, if you've got like a five-minute video and you take 20 seconds to get through crap, that's a actually a larger percentage of the video than you might realize. And it's something that some people just don't put up with anymore. The the attention spans nowadays are really short. If you are interested in a topic, Dan, you click on a video. How long before your I gotta get out of here alert hits up? Uh, and this is a channel of someone you don't know. Now I'm not talking about someone you know, you just put up with it, but like, this looks like an interesting topic. Let me click it. How long before you're like, I gotta get out of here?

SPEAKER_01 29:22

It's so nuanced. Like, I wish I had a clear answer for that. It's so nuanced. I think a lot of it comes down to vibes. So, for example, yesterday we were doing our channel review stream, and a creator popped up who reviews action figures and from like a lot of old TV shows, like Teenage Meet and Ninja Turtles, things like that. Yeah. So their thumbnails were not great for that. Like, you just it was so hard to discern from the thumbnails what you were getting into. But we clicked on the video and we found ourselves watching for longer than we normally would on a channel audit stream. We were just blown away by this person's like personality. They were just so infectious, they were just so like like so happy to be doing what they're doing and so glad to be there that you just wanted to hang out with them, you know. And we we spent more time complimenting their performance in the video than we did actually critiquing the things that they could be doing, you know. We did give them some tips, but that my point is that would have been like the opposite problem where you had to convince me to click. They didn't do a good job of that, but I clicked and I'm very happy I did, you know, because I like hanging out with this person. But if the video is more informative and I feel like, you know, there's a lot of views on this thing, it's probably gonna give me what I want, but they're saying, welcome back, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I know last week I said I was gonna post more, and I'm not. Yeah, like I'm not clicking off the video, but I'm very quick to skip ahead. I give everyone that benefit of the doubt of like, let me just see if you get to the point already or not. And some other signals might make me click away, like if they're screen sharing, but the screen shares is too zoomed out or a bad resolution. So, you know, if when you're screen sharing like Windows Desktop, it's a lot of tiny elements on there. You have to be aware of that on YouTube. You got to zoom in on stuff so I can see what the heck's going on. And those are the signals I'm kind of looking for in like more informative or tutorial videos. And it just now I can go down the whole list of things, right? I can sit here and tell you every single type of video I watch and whether or not they're gonna get like clicks or clicked off or not. But it's nuanced, it's very nuanced.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Yeah, and I I agree with that because sometimes you need a slow burn, but if it's someone I don't know, unless I'm super invested in the topic, uh, I give you a couple of seconds to hook me, right? To get that hook in, to get make me interested in what I'm going to see. Mr. Beast always says, you know, uh, double down on what you got them into the channel or the video for the first place in the first place, which is true. Like if your video says you're gonna help someone tie a tie, you should probably say, in this video, you're gonna learn how to tie a tie. I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it. It takes 15 minutes. Like, you should do that. It's not a bad thing to do. And it doesn't mean you can never introduce yourself. I just think like there's a nuance there that is, and like you said, it's kind of based on vibes, but I think you can look at your retention graph to understand what that vibe worked. I know that's what you wanted me to say. Right, right. The thing is, like, if you are interesting, which by the way, you're probably not a good care good judge of whether or not you're interesting. I think I'm not a good judge. I think anyone who thinks you're interesting, you should ask someone else if you're actually interesting. Um, but your retention graph will tell you. Uh sometimes you can get away with stuff that's longer and and doesn't get to the point. But even some of the bigger creators who who can spend as much time saying whatever the heck they want to typically get to the point right off the bat. Like that's just a thing that works. So um I think as a new creator, you just gotta realize that, and I hate to say it like this, but it's true. People don't care who you are, they just they came for something else. Don't bore us, get to the chorus.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

When it comes to the intros, and I did not go into this in the video that you mentioned, but when it comes to intros, my personal belief, and I can't I can't bog down a video with this information, by the way. It's good in the podcast format, but in in a video like that, I now I gotta be quick, right? Because I'm gonna lose people. So in general, I guess what I'm saying is I'm so used to videos that open up with, hey, welcome back, I'm Bob, that as long as they don't belabor on that and they literally just say, Hell, hey, welcome back, I'm so and so, and then they get start getting to the point, I'm okay with that. If they belabor a little bit, I might skip ahead. If it continues for too long, I click off, right? But the easy advice to give the listener here is you don't have to worry about that if you just get to the point and save the introductions for later. By the way, if you watch this whole video, my name is Dan, and I do this all the time. I've watched plenty of creators who do that, and it's very effective because you got me to the end. You may as well introduce yourself. If I'm still here after 20 minutes, then sure. Yeah, tell me who you are, tell me more about what your channel is. That's awesome. That's the perfect time to do it. Doing it up front, you like you're not thinking about the new viewer. So, yes, of course I can get on with that like very like by the book advice, but in reality, I think most of us have seen channels that kind of do their little like late-night talk show intro first, and they put up with it, you know. I I do think a lot of people put up with it, but the retention graph is very, a very honest uh frenemy, and it'll it'll be it'll tell you what's really going on, and the easy thing to say is like, hey, cut all that out. But it's nuanced. I do think it like truly, I believe personally, it's nuanced.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Uh, another

Stop Refreshing Studio After Upload

SPEAKER_00 34:16

thing you talked about, which is uh something that I I I've gotten better about, but uh I think as any content creator knows, like it's hard to do this, is to not obsess over YouTube Studio after you press upload. If you're a larger creator, you kind of have to at times because sometimes that can be the difference between a lot of views and not a lot of views, especially if it's a news related thing where there's only a certain amount of time the video is gonna be worth something. Looking at click-through rates and thumbnails and stuff. And is it one of 10? Is it 10 of 10, whatever the case may be? Like, I get it. But if you're kind of new and starting out, um, that's probably a waste of your time because it's it's gonna take a couple hundred views before YouTube tells you anything useful anyway. And if you're not averaging that to begin with, looking at that is kind of pointless. Um, over the course of weeks and stuff, you can look back and kind of get into that. But obsessing over it is a slippery slope because what I have found personally, and other creators I've talked to have found is you end up putting a little bit of your own self-worth and value into that, whatever that number is. If you're like a one of ten, you're like, I figured it out, I am the best. And then when that 10 of 10 comes around, uh, all of a sudden you're canceled, you're the worst. You don't know what you're doing. What are your thoughts on on this whole obsession thing?

SPEAKER_01 35:24

I will tell you that it's not good to obsess over it. I'll tell you to hide the app on your phone, knowing I don't do those things either. It's it's just it's do as I say, not as I do, kind of thing. I really do think that you're right, attaching you will attach your own self-worth as a person to these numbers that could change. They could just change tomorrow. Like, I've had so many videos. There's videos on the channel right now where they started off real slow and then got picked up by the general YouTube browse feature algorithm or Google search, you know. Like stuff can happen on YouTube that makes you feel silly in hindsight for like stressing, and stuff can happen that makes you feel like silly for thinking this was gonna be a viral hit and you finally cracked YouTube. But my remedy to this is not just maybe hide the app from yourself. That's not gonna work. You know where you hit it, you're still you. What you can do instead is what I've been trying, which is give yourself a number of things to do after you post the video. So, for example, I post a video over the weekend, and you know, I'm gonna be excited. I want to see how it does, but I have something else I have to get to. Maybe, maybe you you should post your videos before you have to go grocery shopping, before you have to walk your dog, or before you do something fun, like play a game, like schedule some time to play some Skyrim. And now you're not looking at the app because you are preoccupied with something else, and it's so much healthier to come back after a day of doing stuff, and you know, then you can see how the thing how things are doing. Now, I know people like us will also tell you no, in case something goes wrong, you have to be there so you can change the thumbnail. Sometimes you don't need to change the thumbnail. Sometimes you believe in your title, you believe in your thumbnail, and it's just the idea that isn't gonna work, and you're taking a gamble. Like, I'm gonna try this idea. This is the best way I can explain it via title and thumbnail. I'm gonna hold on to that, and I'm just gonna post it and move on. And when it's when it's those situations, give yourself something else to do because it's just so much better for your mental health. You should find stuff to do out that isn't YouTube anyway. So make that the time you do something that's not YouTube related.

Final Thoughts And What To Comment

SPEAKER_00 37:28

And one of those things is uh to watch this channel and subscribe because why not? I mean, uh, we're here to give you all the type of value that we try to give you every single week. This has been a nice uh departure from some of the interviews I've been doing recently and having Dan back on has been really cool. Uh we do want to I do want to kind of do more of these when updates come out. We can kind of batch talk about all these updates that are coming to YouTube, but I'd love to hear what you guys think. Uh, especially if you're watching the YouTube video, leave a comment below. Let us know what you think about the the the like button being changed and of course the subscription tab being moved on mobile. I feel like that's those are two potentially big things that we may never see happen, but we might see them literally next week. Like you never know with YouTube next week. It could be everyone could have it and be like, wait a minute, where did my like button go? Wait a minute, or dislike button. Where did where did the subscription tab go? It's at the top. Oh, I don't know that because I'm my muscle memory is at the bottom. That's what I'm worried about, personally. That's personally what I'm worried about. Uh anything you're worried about, Dan, before we before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_01 38:24

You know what? No, I I think YouTube's doing some cool stuff. Yeah, I'm excited to try the chat feature. Oh, and you know, there's plenty of there's plenty of things I could criticize, but there just seems to be kind of a balance right now. You get some updates you don't like, you get some updates you like, and then you realize it's kind of always been this way, you know. So there's enough stressing me out. I'm gonna choose to be happy.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Well, if you're new here, this is just one of the many different things we do here on the podcast channel. Make sure you hit that subscribe button, like button. If you're listening to an audio podcast, there will be a link in the show notes to take you over here where you can do the same. Also, I got a video right here you can watch that's really good. Trust me when I tell you you should watch it. I'll see y'all in the next one.