Friday, December 14, 2012

Something, something about YouTube, something, some other thing

So, YouTube updates their essay ever is complaining again. This is nothing new, of course. I remember this happening at least three times. Each time they tried to make improvements to the site I was feeling some features missing (why can't I see all of a channel's videos without going to that channel page anymore?) However there is a feature that YouTube sincerely needs. Without it the site has become a terrific mass.
 But first, I'm going to stall for time until I can remember what it is.

YouTube, I know you make your money by adding new music people procrastinate. Watching videos of laughing babies and talentless hacks trying to make celebrities out of themselves (sometimes successfully.) I understand you need you to be profitable to feed your expensive habits children. I understand, I really do, but it's no excuse to mix recommendations with uploads from my subscriptions. It means I spend more time looking for content I want. That means it means I watch less stuff and you make less money for prostitutes to provide for your families.

No, wait! Now I remember. . .

I LOVE fighting games and the community around them. Some of the channels in the fighting community are very prolific. For the past few weeks my front page on YouTube has been dominated by videos of competitive matches of Blazblue Chronophantasma. Some days I'm really in the mood for this. But sometimes I want to watch cute pet videos, videos about other games or a lecture about classic literature. If I'm in the mood to watch something specific I have to search around everything else. YouTube has always had this problem but it's been made worse by what I mentioned in an absent-minded tirade a paragraph ago. The solution is so obvious you to should feel embarrassed at the thought of this three years ago.

Let me create filters for my own subscriptions. The end-user groups or subscriptions into categories they specify. For example, I would trade one specifically all the fighting game stuff, another one for gaming in general, yet another one for educational channels etc. etc. etc.
YouTube can call them “networks” to keep with the television analogy, and allow users to share them like playlists. Videos recommended to me by cold unfeeling statistical analysis can be it's own network as well.

This way, I can get to the content I feel like watching faster. I'm subscribed to nearly 70 channels on YouTube. The current user interface for the site starts to show limitations at that point.

(Also, give me easy access to the "shows" section. I have no idea how to reach it without searching for a specific channel name.)

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