Google’s YouTube is working to make it easier for users to find comments from their friends or from people featured in the videos whenever users search YouTube for fresh content. To make that happen, YouTube is rejiggering the comments sections to make remarks from selected participants to get higher priority.
The coming changes in the comment rankings were unveiled by Nundu Janakiram, YouTube’s product manager, and Yonatan Zunger, YouTube’s principal engineer, in a Sept. 24 post on the YouTube Official Blog.
“Let’s say you’re watching a video from Justin Timberlake,” wrote Janakiram and Zunger. “What type of video comment would be awesome to see: one from JT himself, one from people you care about who love the video … or one from just the last random person to stop by?”
Certainly, the most recent comment left by a stranger would not necessarily be the most relevant for a user, they wrote. To fix that, “comments will soon become conversations that matter to you,” said the post. “In the coming months, comments from people you care about will rise up where you can see them, while new tools will help video creators moderate conversations for welcome and unwelcome voices.”
So far, users will see YouTube comments on their Google+ pages gain the new feature via the channel discussion tab, according to the post. “This update will come to comments on all videos later this year, as we bring you more ways to connect with familiar faces on YouTube.”
Under the new feature, comments from friends and relevant sources will automatically rise to the top of a user’s YouTube comments feed. “You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles,” according to the post. Users will also be able to join the discussion publicly or privately in the future.
In addition, users will also gain some new tools to review comments before they’re actually posted, and to block certain words, the post reported. Users will also be able to auto-approve comments from people they know. “These [features] can help you spend less time moderating, and more time sharing videos and connecting with your fans.”
In August, Google’s YouTube video service celebrated its first-ever “Geek Week” online event, featuring a wide range of special geek-aimed content.
In May, YouTube turned 8 years old, having launched in May 2005 as a video-sharing Website where people could post their creative works and watch to see if they gained any footholds. YouTube’s popularity has been huge, with the site receiving more than 100 hours of uploaded video from creators each minute. All of that video content is being created by millions of partners and contributors, some of whom have become very popular through the growing site.
Also in May, YouTube announced a new pilot program through which viewers will be able to buy premium video content for fees starting at 99 cents per month to reward video creators for their labors while encouraging the development of better video for the huge online audience.
In March, YouTube announced that it has grown to providing video content for more than 1 billion viewers per month. The popular video-sharing site has helped launch the careers of a slew of entertainers and made celebrities out of ordinary citizens, thanks to viral videos.