Youtube comments have a bad reputation. It is a well deserved rep, that cause many to ignore or even install custom software to avoid. It’s a playground for trolls, racists, and people who are mean spirited and want to get a rise out of content providers. In the midst of the cesspool of comments, there are usually some nice people who have genuine feedback to offer. I’m starting to pay more attention to Youtube, and the more I do, the more I find that people there don’t want to read:

Youtube is a video site and people treat it as such. There’s no reading in video! Just like millions of Americans loathe subtitled movies, millions of Youtube viewers will not read the comments.

Why is this an issue anyway?

Well, most of my videos are howtos, tutorials and Q&A, so I get a lot of followup questions on certain topics. Most times, the Youtube community is generous enough to answer, and so do I, but as time passes, the comments get buried.

Buried comments are generally ignored on Youtube.

That is the issue. Here’s a prime example:

• I have a very popular video (#1 on Google Search) on how to create free iPhone ringtones simply by changing a file extension.
• A common question that people ask is how do you “chop up” an existing song to make a ringtone. I’ve made a video on this topic and I’ve also answered the question numerous times in the Youtube comments.
• As soon as the answer gets buried to page 2, the question is repeated.
  It’s very annoying.

Do I fault Youtube users for ignoring the hundreds of comments that address their concern? I’d like to, but in reality, users have a short attention span, especially those who are attracted to 5 minute tutorial videos.

Why even bother with Youtube comments?

Youtube has a metric called “Most Discussed” which displays videos with the most comments. Some users like to watch videos that have a lot of comments. They don’t actually care what the comments are, but they measure a certain buzz factor by this metric. In my opinion, it’s an invalid metric to measure, but I’m by no means a Youtube authority.

So this is the double-edged sword with a barb wired handle: Hardly anyone pays attention to anything prior to the last 10 comments, yet the videos with the most comments, get more views. A big part of me would like to disable Youtube comments due to the fact that people don’t read them. Ironically, they will take time to send an email or Youtube message, rather than finding the answer in the comments. At the same time, I have to recognize that Youtube comments provide “juice” to your video and promote viewership. Notice how a lot of bigtime Youtube providers are encouraging their users to comment? This is why.

It’s ironic that I’m complaining about text comments on a video site, but if you produce videos like I do, you’ll find community interaction is pretty important. It’s sad that I have to constantly repeat the same answers over and over again due to this glaring issue, but at least users are watching. How about you? Does your Youtube community pay attention to comments past the first page?

Let me know in the comments

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The Adobe AIR client, Alert Thingy, for FriendFeed launched. While it shows great potential, and is very young at version 1.0, there are areas that it can definitely improve. I’ve been using it for about an hour now and while I like it, there are some frustrating points which I believe should be addressed.

Here are 7 reasons that I’ve already sent the author:

1. Finite control of transparency and colors. People are picky about this one. While I like the default color scheme, others might not. The default transparency could use a slider control as well.
2. Control of how many comments to show in the window. Maybe there’s a way to collapse comments similar to the way FriendFeed does. Just look at Bret Taylor’s post on FriendFeed as an example.
3. This may go to point 1, but I think we need an option to dress up the service icons a bit. If you introduce a theming system, maybe it could address this.
4. Please honor FriendFeed’s “hide” settings. I’m seeing things on Alert Thingy that are hidden on Friendfeed.com. This is a high priority one in my opinion.
5. I don’t know if this one is possible, but it would be nice to bring FriendFeed’s “hide” ability to the client.
6. The ability to show the “everyone” feed in the client
7. Search ability for the “everyone” feed

So there you have it. I’m sure these will be addressed in some form or fashion and I look forward to using Alert Thingy more and more.

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• 7 Ways to Utilize FriendFeed Rooms
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