People use social media to connect not only with their loved ones but also with information. To say that word spreads like wildfire on these platforms is an understatement. You can know about an event merely minutes after it happened. And sometimes, you’ll know what’s happening while the event is still happening.
Continue Reading
YouTubing is now one of the most lucrative careers, one that can be started from simply buying real YouTube views. The best thing about it is that you don’t need a degree to become a YouTuber. Even children have been helping their families earn millions by starring in videos on this platform.
Continue ReadingIt’s a great time to be alive. You can use social media platforms not just to connect with people and share your love for something but also to earn money. And the money you can get from these platforms is not negligible. You can earn millions a year if you perform well.
However, there’s a problem that needs addressing. Toxicity is common on social media platforms. You will inevitably meet some trolls.
These trolls may berate you in your comments section. Also, they may attack your other viewers through hate speech and disinformation. You may be forced to release an uncharacteristic video to respond when they do that. That may throw your audience and other people who stumble upon your channel off.
Another thing they can do is encourage others to dislike your videos. While viewers can no longer see the dislike count, you can. And it can be disheartening to see that, of all metrics, go up. That’s bad for your mental health. Furthermore, that may push you to quit YouTubing.
So, are you powerless against them? Not necessarily. You can use a feature to stop them from causing you trouble. Like in other social media platforms, you can block users on YouTube to stop giving them more YouTube views.
On other social media platforms, blocking a person disables them from seeing and contacting you. For example, on Facebook, blocked users can’t message you. Aside from that, they can’t see your profile, posts, and comments anywhere on Facebook. They also can’t send you a friend request.
Does the same thing happen on YouTube? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. If they are content creators, their videos may still appear in your feed and recommendations. Also, they can still see your videos.
They can still comment on your videos too. However, their comments will not increase the comment count. More importantly, only they can see those comments. That stops them from attacking you or spreading hate in your comment section.
They can still react to your video by leaving a like or a dislike. The same thing goes for comments of other people on your videos.
Even though the blocking feature of YouTube is not as strong as that of Facebook, it is better than nothing.
Launch the web browser of your choice, then open the YouTube website. Next, visit the channel you want to block. You can put their channel name in the YouTube search bar to get there. But if you can’t remember their channel name, you can check your comment section. Click their name to get to their channel.
Next, go to the About section in their channel. That tab will show you their channel description and when they joined YouTube. But that’s not important. What you want to look for is the flag-shaped Report User button. It is under the Stats section.
Click that button to access a drop-down menu. You can select “Block User” then “Submit” to disallow them from commenting on your videos. Also, you can click on the “Report User” option to make YouTube review their account.
When reporting a user, always choose the appropriate option for best results. You can flag them for harassment/cyberbullying, impersonation, violent threats, child endangerment, hate speech, spam, and scams. Also, you can report them for having content with your private information on it.
YouTube monitors flag users 24/7 to determine whether they adhere to the Community Guidelines or need to be penalized.
Blocking YouTube users on the YouTube smartphone apps is straightforward. Doing it would not take a minute.
Open the YouTube app on your smartphone. Then, visit the channel you want to block. Again, you can check your comment section if you can’t remember their channel name.
Then, click on the three dots at the top right corner of your screen. Choose “Block User” and confirm by choosing “Block.”
You can report the said user. Choose the appropriate category, then click “Next.” The next page will let you specify which are the abusive video/s that YouTube should check. You can do or skip that step. Next, add additional notes if you want to. And last, tap “Submit.”
Unfortunately, there’s no way to make your content invisible to others and vice versa. However, you can stop a channel’s videos from appearing in your homepage recommendations. That way, you will only see their channels when you visit them or in search results.
Here’s how you can do that.
Open the YouTube website on a web browser and log into your account. If you are already there, click the Home button or the YouTube logo to go back to your home page.
Find a video from the channel you want to block. Then, click on the three dots next to the title of that video. Note that it is not immediately visible. To make the three dots appear, hover your mouse over the title or thumbnail of the video.
Click “Don’t Recommend Channel,” which should do the trick.
Launch the YouTube app on your Android or iOS device. Then, find a video from the channel you don’t want to see on your Home recommendations. Unlike YouTube on a web browser, you can immediately see the three dots next to the video title. Tap “Don’t Recommend Channel,” and you are done.
When you block a YouTube user, you disallow them from commenting on your videos. That means you are purposely reducing the engagement. However, it is still recommended that you do it.
For one, it is only one user you are blocking. And that one user is doing nothing but cause you trouble. For the sake of your mental health and your viewer’s safety, it is worth losing that one person’s comments. You can always gain more comments from people who are not trolls.
YouTube can help you rediscover yourself, believe it or not. How? You can check the list of content creators you follow and have followed. By doing so, you can see how your tastes have changed over time. Also, you may have an interest that you have put at the back of your mind and have forgotten about them. Looking at your Top 10 YouTube views sites and subscription history can remind you of those things. And the chances are you still love those things, and you may have even helped buy them YouTube views.
You can also check your subscriptions if you want to “declutter.” Getting recommended videos from YouTube channels you no longer watch could get annoying. So, you may want to unsubscribe to them.
So, how can you do this? There are many methods to do it. And the steps can also change depending on what device you are using. Let’s look at all of them.
You can’t see how long you have subscribed to a channel using YouTube’s tools. A third-party app is needed for you to be able to do that. But it can show you your subscription history.
Here is how you do it on the web or mobile app.
The first step, of course, is to visit Youtube.com using a web browser and log into your account. Then, on the left-side panel, click on “Subscriptions.”
Finally, click on “Manage.” That should be on the top right corner of the screen, below the “Create” button.
The steps on the mobile app are almost the same as when you do it on the web. You start by launching the YouTube mobile app. If you haven’t logged in yet, do that. Then, tap on “Subscriptions.” That is between the (+) icon and “Library” at the bottom left side of the screen.
There will be a menu at the top of the screen displaying the profile pictures of the channels you are subscribed to. There’s clickable text saying “Manage” on the rightmost side of that menu. Tap on that.
Tapping or clicking “Manage” on mobile and the web will open the YouTube subscription management page. There, you can see the history of your subscriptions.
Please note that YouTube will not list the channels in any particular order. So, because the channel is at the topmost of the list does not mean it was the latest addition to that list.
On this page, you can unsubscribe to channels that you are not interested in anymore. Also, you can set up alerts, so you don’t miss any video from a channel that you really like. That gives you some control over how YouTube presents content to you on your Home screen.
However, keep in mind that you can’t turn the notification bell on for channels labeled as “Made for Kids.”
Suppose you want to see all the channels you are subscribed to on YouTube. At the same time, you want to learn how long you have been subscribed to that content creator.
As mentioned earlier, no native YouTube tool can give you what you want. But, you can get that using another Google product. Remember, YouTube is a subsidiary of Google.
That product would be My Google Activity. Open an internet browser, go to its webpage, and then sign into the Google account associated with your YouTube channel.
Once logged in, there should be a list of options on the left side of the screen. If it is not there, click or tap on the hamburger menu at the top-left corner of the screen.
Next, select “Other Google Activity.” That will redirect you to the “Activity controls” page. Scroll down until you find “YouTube Channel Subscriptions.”
Click on “View Subscriptions.” If you do this, a new browser tab will open. Click on that tab to see the channels you are subscribed to on the largest video-sharing website in the world.
Unlike the previous method, you can see when you click that subscribe button on each channel. It will show you not just the date but also the exact time when you subscribed. Unfortunately, it will not tell you exactly how many months or days you have been subscribed. If you want to know, you have to do the computation yourself.
You can delete your subscriptions activity on My Google Activity. That will effectively unsubscribe you to the channel that you deleted. However, it may take a few hours before Google can fully remove the data on YouTube.
What you can’t do, though, is activate or deactivate the notification bell. So, you can’t use this method to set alerts. You have to do that on the YouTube app or website.
You can also use third-party apps to review your YouTube subscription history. You have to set your YouTube subscription visibility to “Public” for this to work. Therefore, it’s not for people who see privacy as an issue.
Here’s how you adjust your subscription visibility setting.
Log into YouTube. Then, tap or click on your profile photo. Select “Settings.”
On the Settings page, locate “Privacy” and click on that. Then look for the option that says, “Keep all my subscriptions private.” Toggle that off.
Now, you can use third-party apps/websites. Most of these will only need you to paste your channel’s URL into the textbox. Then, click the “Continue” button or any equivalent of that.
After that, you should see a list of all channels you are subscribed to. And as with My Google Activity, you’ll see the date and time when you subscribed.
Unlike doing it on YouTube, you can’t set or stop alerts. Likewise, unlike dong it on YouTube or My Google Activity, you can’t unsubscribe to any channels through that preview.
So, this method does not offer anything the official methods do not provide. And it also offers less than them. So, there’s really no reason to choose this. You also have to make your subscriptions’ visibility public. It’s best not to do that.
Things from South Korea are increasingly getting popular. For instance, movies or television series like Train to Busan or Squid Game were the talks of the town when they came out. And until now, people would not shut up about them.
Continue Reading
Twitter was the social media platform that introduced hashtags. These are tags preceded with a hash symbol (#) and hence the name. They help in grouping and categorizing content to promote ease of search. Due to how effective hashtags are as content filters, other social media platforms adapted them. In YouTube, for example, hashtags are used to denote the topic the video is centering around.
Continue Reading
The inception of social media has affected how businesses work. Facebook, Twitter, and especially YouTube allowed them to increase their reach. Advertising is not more accessible than before. No longer do companies need to rely exclusively on billboards and Tv commercials. They can attract customers using social media – be it by ads or through influencers.
Continue Reading
YouTube is undoubtedly one of the most successful websites in the world. It is one of the social media giants, the primary source of video entertainment, and one of the largest search engines. That is not a feat that’s easy to accomplish.
Continue Reading
YouTube is making efforts to improve the platform’s interface by adding new features. However, while the PiP (Picture-in-picture) will certainly make YouTube users happy, an auto-generated thumbnail experiment might not as it is causing controversy. Read on to find out more about the latest YouTube updates.
Over the next couple of weeks, YouTube will be running an experiment with a new feature that only 0.3% of YouTube users can see. Instead of displaying the custom thumbnail uploaded by the channel, YouTube will show an auto-generated thumbnail.
We are running a small experiment where 0.3% of viewers will see an auto-generated thumbnail, instead of your custom thumbnail. We are not removing the ability to create your custom thumbnail, but we hope to gain insights on auto-generated thumbnails for the future.
— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 28, 2018
Thumbnails are a big part of what drives viewership on YouTube. YouTube creators have so far enjoyed the freedom of creating their own custom thumbnail that allows them to pick one particular image to represent the content of the entire video. It looks like this experiment by YouTube is highly motivated by the infamous tradition of “clickbait,” a common bad strategy for getting views when there are better view strategies available.
🙏🏻 This #YouTube update could lead to the end of thumbnail clickbait forever. 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/MYxrg9yBem
— Andrew Wall (@AwallDigital) June 28, 2018
There are a lot of clickbait scams that display a thumbnail that has nothing to do with the content of the video, thus fooling people into clicking on the video. It looks like YouTube is sick of that, and they’re trying to put an end to it by considering the auto-generated thumbnails. Here’s what YouTube said regarding this experiment;
“Over the next few weeks, a small group of viewers (0.3% of those on YouTube site-wide) will see the default, auto-generated thumbnail for all videos instead of the custom thumbnail. For creators, this is the second thumbnail that’s suggested when you upload your video. Note: this will not affect the content of the videos.”
YouTube states that there are no plans to remove the ability to add custom thumbnails (yet) and that this experiment only aims to improve auto-generated thumbnails.
Sharing answers to top q's we’re seeing about the thumbnail experiment:
– Custom thumbs aren't going away
– 99.7% still see the creator's custom thumbnail
– A lot of creators use auto-generated thumbnails, this test helps improve them for those using them: https://t.co/sOMYD9xhw0— Team YouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 28, 2018
Even though only 0.03% of all users will actually be a part of the experiment, it still it is a fairly big number when you do the math. Considering that YouTube attracts approximately 1.8 billion active users, the auto-generated thumbnails may actually be seen by more than 5 million people.
This update will in no doubt be gladly accepted by the YouTube community. For a long time, YouTube users have been waiting for the opportunity to watch YouTube videos while using other apps. This option was available for paid YouTube premium and YouTube Red subscribers, it looks like YouTube is rolling out the PiP support to non-paying Android users in the US.
The new Android update with the picture-in-picture feature is my favorite update ever 😍😍😍😍😍😍 CAN FINALLY PLAY YOUTUBE WHILE IN OTHER APPS, I CAN DIE HAPPY
— Jesyka 👽🦄💀🥑 (@jesykahope) June 28, 2018
I don’t think it’s that serious, Jeyska, but you do you…
If you’re not familiar with the feature, here’s how it works:
Keep in mind that this update is available for Android users in the US. Additionally, music content is unavailable for PiP playback without a YouTube Premium subscription.
Even though the PiP update is deemed as positive, the auto-generated thumbnails experiment is causing a lot of arguments. YouTube users, especially hard-working creators, have had separate opinions regarding this experiment; with many complaining about the auto-generated thumbnails.
If YouTube wanted to combat clickbait with their new system of not showing thumbnails, they could at least only do it to channels that are already known to produce clickbait content
— Aar (@Aarmastah) June 28, 2018
YouTube may not be making any definite moves regarding the thumbnail situation soon, but creators are certainly fuming because they put a lot of effort into their custom thumbnails. YouTube creators can be calm, for now, because YouTube has repeatedly said that the custom thumbnails option will not be removed and that this experiment is for research purposes only.
YouTube is announcing fresh ways to monetize and get revenue on the platform. After the successful launch of the Super Chat feature last year, YouTube decided to focus on providing more ways for its valuable creators to make money on YouTube.
This is a new feature that will be welcomed by creators. YouTube is rolling out a new channel membership feature that will be available for every eligible account with over 100,000 subscribers;
“With Channel Memberships, viewers pay a monthly recurring fee of $4.99 to get unique badges, new emoji, Members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to unique custom perks offered by creators, such as exclusive live-streams, extra videos, or shout-outs.”
According to YouTube, creators have already been experimenting with this update, and the results are positive. The traveling duo Simon and Martina have been using the Channel Memberships option to create a miniseries exclusively for their members.
Channels with this program will be able to earn revenue when their viewers purchase public badges, emoji, and access the creator perks offered by the channel via monthly recurring payments. Channels without it, because they don’t have 100,000 subscribers, have their work cut out for them. Start reading about ways to get more subscribers now to meet the 100,000 goal!
If you already had the “Sponsorships” feature on your YouTube profile, then this is the same thing. YouTube confirmed that this is actually the same feature and that only the name will be changing in the upcoming weeks.
According to YouTube, the “Sponsor” symbol, will soon be replaced with Channel Memberships;
“A select group of creators have been using channel memberships under the name sponsorships. We want more creators to continue to find different ways to earn money from sources other than ads. We believe that changing the name to memberships will make it more broadly appealing to both creators and viewers.”
YouTube announced that the name change was going to take place in late June or August 2018.
YouTube creators have been using YouTube to sell their merchandise for ages. Now, YouTube has revealed a more convenient way for creators to sell merchandise right from their channel.
From t-shirts to mugs, to posters; creators will have the chance to individually customize their merchandise. This update is already available for all eligible U.S.-based channels with over 10,000 subscribers, and YouTube plans to expand the tool to more creators around to globe soon.
If your channel doesn’t yet have 10,000 subscriber, spending a little bit on buying subscribers with well-reviewed sites can get you over that hump. You can start earning money faster as even small audiences can spend a bit if they’re dedicated.
This update will vastly improve content uploading on YouTube. With “Premieres,” creators will have a new and better way to create content and upload it on the platform. Basically, with Premieres, creators will be able to debut pre-recorded videos as a live moment;
“When creators choose to release a premiere, we’ll automatically create a public landing page to build anticipation and hype up new content. When all fans show up to watch the premiere, they’ll be able to chat with each other (and with the creator!) in real time via live chat. It’s as if a creator’s entire community is one theater together watching their latest upload.”
The Premieres will also unlock new revenue streams. Creators will be able to use the Super Chat feature on traditional YouTube videos and also utilize the Channel Memberships (Sponsorships) perks that were previously only available on live videos.
This will be an excellent feature to use when you want to show an exciting new video to your fans and share the premiere moment together. Premieres have started rolling out to creators yesterday and will be available more broadly soon.
It looks like YouTube is taking its competition seriously. With Facebook and Instagram making efforts to compete with YouTube, it is up to YouTube to keep its status as the number one video-sharing platform. Their response couldn’t have been better:
All of these updates will be gladly accepted on the platform and will improve the overall user experience. Creators have been looking for more ways to make money on YouTube, and now they’ve got them. A good move by YouTube, indeed.