Recommendation for YouTube Insight: Timeline Markers

YouTube Insights is a great tool, but there is no doubt it could be better.

If you're like me, you like playing with your YouTube videos to get more views: tweaking the titles, adding new tags, changing their category, or linking them up with annotations. I like seeing the effect my changes have using the Insight feature. Yet, this is hard because, unless I write down the date, I only know the approximate time I made the changes and try to guess if the trends on the graph are aligned with them.

YouTube should add a feature where the user can insert timeline markers in the graph, in order to make correlating trends easy to recognize.


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube HQ/HD Advertisement Glitch - "Angels & Demons" Trailer

I noticed YouTube made a minor mess up on the homepage ad for the movie, Angels & Demons.

Notice in the picture below, it gives the "HQ" option.


But when you click on it, the "HQ" turns into an "HD."

No biggy.

Link to movie trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekfTP1UQG1o

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Partner Problem - Advertising on "Syndicated" Videos?

There is a little option when you upload a video which asks if you want to "make this video available on mobile phones and TV."

This really is not talking about YouTube selling your video TV stations or documentaries. No, this is talking about YouTube sharing your video on its mobile phone version of its website, m.youtube.com, and its TV site, youtube.com/tv.

The complaint YouTube partners (users that make money off the ads running on their video) is that advertisements DO NOT run on either mobile or TV YouTube videos. Neither YouTube or its partners are making money when people view the vids outside of the computer.

However, I am very sure that YouTube will eventually add that feature; because if there is a way to make money, be rest assured Google will find it out and do it.


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

How the heck do I contact YouTube?

It sits down there at the bottom right of every YouTube page: Contact. It makes it look so easy. Just click on it, that's all you have to do.... WRONG!

You click on it and it give you a whole bunch of stuff. Most are links which guide you back to a help section or a group forum.

But you want to talk to a human. Oh, look, at the bottom: there is a mailing address and a phone number. Great!


So you call the number given: 650-253-0000

Unfortunately, it's not that easy because you just called the Google Company, not YouTube. yes, they are the same, but you want to talk to someone specifically about YouTube.

Press 5 for customer service live. Again, this is not a place where you can just ask someone a question and get a simple answer...

Basically, YouTube - and Google for that matter - are impossible to talk to. Just accept it. I can count the number of times I have actually been personally contacted by YouTube/Google on one hand.

Why is this? Why is YouTube and Google so bad at personal interaction with people? Because YouTube/Google has so many customers and is unable to handle every individual request, you say? NO! Those may be true, but that is not the reason. The reason Google and YouTube never return emails and never pick up phone calls is because YouTube and Google are run by an evil computer that is trying to take over the internet, one site at a time (just like NPR is run by a giant mega computer, but that is another blog for another day).

So there you have it. Hope this was an informative read for you.


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Issue - Save Changes: Green Bar There, But No Words

Today was the first time I've seen this problem: if you change any settings on your account, it should show a green bar at the top of the screen saying something like, "changes saved." But today, there were no words, as the picture shows above.

To be honest, I don't care about this glitch. It's the new users that might be a little thrown off, but even then, they will figure things out.


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

Registering Multiple YouTube Accounts

Right now as it stands, you can register as many YouTube accounts you want under the same email address...

For example, I just registered all of these accounts today:
http://www.youtube.com/StuffWrongWithYouTub
http://www.youtube.com/StuffWrongWithUTube
http://www.youtube.com/StufWrongWithUTube

Call me a name waster or whatever, but I have a lot of YouTube accounts. Cybersquatting, which is collecting valued domain names in order to sell them at an inflated price, is only illegal when it comes to actual URL address, not sub-domains. Read more about Cybersquatting at Wikipedia.

It might surprise you that I have over 100 accounts registered to one email address. Don't believe me? See the list at http://auntbee09.googlepages.com/YouTubeChannels.html,

Are registering these YouTube accounts good business skills or proof of a creative project? No, they are probably a waste of time. But you never know...


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Inbox Errors - Invisible Messages / Shared Videos

This has been happening to me ever since YouTube updated the "My Account" interface: it will say someone shared a video with me, but there is nothing in the folder...

I don't really care that much because I rarely watch shared videos, because it is usually just spam.

Perhaps the videos shared with me that don't show up are from people who I have blocked.

At least this hasn't been happening with my messages. Well, anyways, this is a clear problem that should be fixed.


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

Blogger Messup - "Scheduled outage at 4:00PM PDT on Thursday (3/25)"

There are some special circumstances which require my attention outside of YouTube. This is one of them.

On March 25, 2009, Blogger.com (the company which this blog is done through) announced on the user's accounts that there was a "Scheduled outage at 4:00PM PDT on Thursday (3/25)"

There is one problem: March 25 of 2009 falls on a Wednesday, not a Thursday! Thursday is on March 26, 2009!

Proof:



Be assured, someone at Blogger got fired today.

Let's look at the mistake one more time, shall we?



Gotta love it when someone makes an international error for everyone to see....

Does anyone even read the announcements anyways? Am I the only one that noticed this?

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Error: Annotation size/ratio-aspect in Embeds

When YouTube played with the aspect-ratio (that is how the size/shape of the video in relation to the video-screen size/shape) and played with the in-video annotations editing, it messed up how the annotations look.

For example, this picture below is of a YouTube video which was uploaded before the high/low quality option. But the aspect-ratio is wide screen and fills up the whole YouTube player. The annotations were also edited in the video, not with the annotations editor. This is how it looks when it is embedded on another website:


Link: http://auntbee09.blogspot.com/2009/01/car-fatally-drops-30ft-into-swamp.html

Notice how tiny the annotation square is and how small the font is... it is practically unread able. This is not supposed to be how it looks...

It should look like this:


Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r7CBdY-0LA

YouTube should not have released annotations until they were ready. They should have left it in its beta form. In addition, annotations should be the same size (or at least readable) what ever the size of the player they are on.

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

Automatically accept friend invites on YouTube

If you have over 400 subscribers, chances are you get at least five friend invites a year. Think about how many friend invites YouTube stars get weekly, like LisaNova or CommunityChannel gets weekly. They must get hundreds weekly.

And like with on most social networking sites (which YouTube kinds is because of the whole friend invite thing), many users just accept the friends without even looking at their profile. This is because more friends = more publicity = more (potential) $$$$ (for partners). It is like the "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours" concept.

So I think YouTube should make a feature so that if you have over 1000 subscribers, you should be able to make it so that friends are automatically accepted. It would save a lot of time.

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Problems - Playback Quality Reset

I have multiple YouTube accounts and no matter how I set the viewing quality on them, it seems like they are always resetting.

If YouTube is reading this: I JUST WANT TO VIEW VIDEOS IN HIGH-QUALITY, THANK YOU!

Why did they make this feature if it doesn't work?

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

How Annoying?!?! YouTube Autoplay when Video Browsing (and opening new tabs)

If you're like me, I browse through YouTube and find all a much of videos that I want to see. I open these videos in new tabs and let them load while I browse more.

But wait, then I have to pause each individual video so that they don't all start playing.

WHO USES QuickList? SHAME ON YOU! (Why? Just because, ok?)



QuickList is fairly impractical in my experience. I mean it is a good concept, but if you have a DSL or slower connection speed, it is nice to let your videos load ahead of time. and QuickList does not allow that.

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YouTube Autoplay on Profiles and Embeds

Have you ever opened up someone's Myspace and after 5 minutes of loading all the songs and videos, it starts playing all a bunch of stuff at one time? It sounds like when someone turns on all the radios at Best Buy.

YouTube hasn't gotten this bad yet, but the "autoplay" feature on Partner profiles is a step toward that. I'm talking about when you click on someone's profile and the user's featured video starts playing instantly.

Partners with YouTube have this option. And true: Partners have the choice to turn that off on their own personal profile, but they have no control over others'.

Why can't us users get control of this instead of having it independently controlled? Meaning, why can't I just have the option: autoplay "on" or "off"

(Yah, I know: this post didn't really talk about "embeds" as mentioned in the title... the same applies to them....)

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

High Quality MESS UP! -YouTube

Annotation says, "CLICK THE LINK IN THE SIDEBAR FOR THE HIGHQUALITY VERSION OF THIS VIDEO."
Link: Extreme PB & J Sandwich-Making

A hilarious Brandon Hardesty (ArtieTSMITW) video... Ruined because of one of YouTube's most stupidest errors, or as YouTube calls it, one of its, "Current Site Issues."

What is wrong with the world when you upload a video, and its default quality looks like a web-cam underwater? Even worse, the video's high quality option / button is not there, but the high quality version still exists!

Does YouTube even know about this? I'm too lazy to look for it on the list of issues that is posted. But seems like a major issue to me.

If you are the victim of this, you can kinda fix it a few ways:

• If you have a HD video, take your original video url and put &fmt=18 at the end of it.


• If you have a HQ video, put &fmt=18 at end of the video.


• I have no idea what &fmt=6 does... but it does something.

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

YOUTUBE: TAKE OFF THE "Last Sign In"

There's no way to remove the "Last Sign In" on your YouTube profile. Some people might not care to much, but for others it is a constant annoyance.

I mean: why do I have to announce to the world that I log into my YouTube channel hourly... or not at all... Shouldn't that stuff be private? Any way, does the time need to be sooooo exact?

For some of the more popular YouTubers out there, the "Last Sign In" is watched carefully by their fans. I've had people send me messages, trying to have an instant message conversation over YouTube, when they see I just signed on a few minutes ago. That is just plain annoying.

Now I understand that it is handy to know what users are active and which aren't; because as we all know, some accounts have been dead for years... and nothing is more annoying than sending an important message to someone, only to never get a response.

So to make everyone happy, why doesn't YouTube just make the "Last Sign In" an approximate time. Like this, instead of it saying I last signed in "12 minutes ago," it should say "within the last 3 days."

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.


*By the way, the picture above is of the channel "YouTube", and it oddly states the joining time as "December 31, 1969." If anyone knows the story behind this, please share.

YouTube Partners - InVideo Advertisingon external websites, like Metacafe

OK, so one really really frustrating thing for YouTube Partners and Advertisers is that free-loader sites, like Metacafe, have found a way to embed YouTube videos so that the InVideo advertisements won't show up. Even worst perhaps, Metacafe does not even link up the "Affiliate Submitter;" instead it merely says the user name and links just to the YouTube main page.

Now, YouTube might be fine with this because it links to their main page, where they can suck just about anyone in. However, as for Partners, well they hate it! Many are considering making embeds not allowed because - while it allows for more publicity - it is taking potential revenues away from them.

One way to get around this is put links to your channel or homepage in the original YouTube description; that way when the site's "bot" comes across your video and copies and paste the description, at least your URL will be there. Or another way to combat this: edit the Metacafe description so it does link to your account, as shown below:


What would make me most happy is if YouTube made an option that allowed or blocked certain sites from embedding your video. For example, if you don't want you video embedded on Metacafe, then you can block www.metacafe.com. Well, that's my idea

***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.

Insight data should be emailed to users

Note: dates and numbers were edited out of this picture.


As everyone knows, keeping records is important. Through Google Analytics,I have all my data collected about my visitors to websites (including this one) sent to me weekly. I have the data sent to me in PDF form and I store it in my email forever, just so I have a record of it.

YouTube's Insight is extremely similar to Google Analytics, yet there is one annoying difference: YouTube Insight has yet to make a feature allowing reports to be emailed to the user automatically.

Better yet, YouTube should join Analytics and Insight together (or allow tracking code from the user to be submitted on their YouTube pages).


***If you have a complaint, email me at StuffWrongWithYouTube@gmail.com and I will probably post it.