raam rahim asked:


2 frozen links for 2 weeks… please help! ,YouTube Chanel – Can you control which videos appear in the ‘Related Videos’ section?We have a channel on WinWeb containing 48 videos we have uploaded. Is it possible to control which videos appear in the ‘Related Videos’ section? There are several in there which don’t really have anything to do with the video being displayed.1. Take a look at the embed code (see below). In bold you’ll see “YourChannelName”. This is where you’ll insert your YouTube username.2. Delete “YourChannelName” and replace it with your actual YouTube username.

The first rule of handling a potential Internet revolt (whether justified or not) is to respond FAST. Whenever criticism builds, respond loudly and clearly to your users that you’re listening, interested, and willing to explore changes, and revolts will be quelled immediately.

In my humble opinion you’ve done almost everything wrong here. After 57 thousand angry comments on the blog, 9 thousand angry comments on the announcement video, dozens of “anti-beta” YouTube channels and online petitions against the change scattered all over the Internet, your response has been deafening silence, and the help page still promises a July 15th “forced migration” date. It’s completely unapparent whether or not anybody at YouTube has noticed the commotion. So what happens? The pitchforks are out, the voices are still getting louder and angrier and the ASCII art on the blog is getting bigger and more desperate. Some users commented they had flagged the video as “promotes hatred or violence”, and it wasn’t a joke.

YouTube, I can’t overstate how badly you’ve handled this. For such a huge site you ought to have something resembling a clue how to listen to and interact with your users! The single thing you didn’t do wrong is that you (apparently) haven’t censored any criticism. Thank goodness, or everyone would have gone ballistic. You got that right by accident though, because actually it’s completely typical for responses to the YouTube blogs to be ignored.Even if you respond now, damage has already been done. Users incensed by the lack of response have probably already gone to their forums and chatrooms all over the web and posted comments along the lines of “YouTube ****. They keep making stupid changes and don’t listen to their users.” Because as long as you aren’t listening, we’ll tell anyone who will.

This doesn’t reflect well on Google either. If there is ever a major revolt against a Google change like this, it looks like you/Google will be completely incapable of handling it. How can you expect to control a billion angry web surfers?While I do sort of look forward to the potential fun and chaos of a massive Internet-wide revolt against Google, I suggest you get a clue. YouTubers have raised big objections to the design of the new channels, aggrandized by the fact that social website users will generally resist and reject major change to their pages, whether they’re improvements or not. It’s like getting up and finding someone switched your car for a different (newer) model overnight, while losing your toolkit and personally chosen seat covers (analogy to the channel backgrounds, etc). You’d feel indignant, right?