Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

My thoughts on Youtube's quality v. quantity (Patreon)

Published:
2017-06-29 15:32:55
Imported:
2026-06

Content

This is a post on the second channel about my perception of how the YouTube algorithm is changing. It seems to me that it is now prioritizing more frequent, rather than better quality content...

Files

Why YouTube Used to Prefer Quality

Almost four years ago I made a video about quality vs quantity on YouTube. Reflecting on how the platform is working in 2017 I find that quantity (frequency) has become significantly more important and quality less so. I'm not saying this is my recommendation for how people should make channels, just that this is what seems to be an effective strategy nowadays. This video involves two distinct sections: on the streets of London and in "studio". The London stuff was filmed to correct mistakes in the earlier studio shoot. The studio shoot was filmed by Raquel Nuno. London street stuff was shot by me on a Zhiyun Crane with GH5.

Comments

Mr Saios

Very interesting thoughts and a delivery typical of your great work!

Christian Leichsenring

So I will file the video whose quality I complained about recently under "for science!" ;)

Tristan Sobey

Great video, I think YouTube is starting to loose sight of what made it so great before Google bought it. I'd argue the, what Ill call, Hyper-monetization oh YouTube videos encourages cheap shallow content like there is today. Sadly they have the market towards the lowest common denominator of viewers and this usually comes at the expense of quality and substance (not unlike many media/news outlets).

EEVblog

At 3:00 you mention that Youtube now often doesn't show the view count. Where is that? For me view count is displayed in both search and recommended video lists.

SZÉKELYDATA

Spot on with this one. So long-time, HQ creators like yourself will want to shift away. YouTubeRed pops to mind :p it's almost like a win-win. YouTube will get paid instead of having to pay... Derek, just be serious and get out of the Google world while you can. I foresee the rise of Vimeo or some Steemit-like video platfrom...

Aaron Koblin

Sadly makes a lot of sense. I'm going to share this with some friends at YouTube. I wonder how many humans are consciously thinking about it this way. It's obviously impossible to make an unbiased algorithm, but it seems like it would be in their longer term interest to value quality content. A smart algorithm (probably driven by machine learning) could better understand what kinds of value were coming from what kinds of audience/content combinations. Certainly the desire to maximize time spent (and Ad dollars spent) isn't necessarily in the user's best interest either (bigger problem...).

Nigel Cammann

This is why I have moved to support you on patreon. The recommended list on Youtube is drowning out the stuff I really want to watch. QUALITY. Real Information. Real experiments.

Mithun Devendra Nayak

Probably, to keep quality videos going on while being frequent, you can make an European Union of quality content producers. Another way would be make many small videos say one video per 2 weeks and then give a great video every 6 or 8 months. I believe this is what you might have planned.

Jack Andropause

I'm a heavy user of PS4 Youtube App and it is not an easy app to use. I have a series of favorite channels I like to go first : vSauce, Veritasium, PBP Space Time to name a few. On the Web, you have the list of the channels listed in the left size. I can help but notice there is no "search" box to filter the list of my channels (I have 127 so far). But I think the worst experience is on the PS3 and PS4 app, in which scrolling through subscription is really not easy. In fact, it is often faster to just type the channels name in the search box: as you can see, the letter P and V are not the first letter of the alphabet. One other thing for the PlayStation app is some options are missing, like "Watch later" that I use often in the Web app version. So yeah, no big effort is made to ease the way of people who know what content they want to see.

Steve Ruis

Or ... YouTube's algorithm exists solely to maximize YouTube's income, why would it not. I also suspect that YouTube's resident genius have no idea how that really happens, so experiments along the line of "tweak this, check that($)" are occurring. I have no idea how YouTube makes its money. It is not at all apparent that it is ad-driven or something else. Does YouTube get a cut of your Patreon gains? Is great puzzlement. What I do know is I do not want to lose you and I also do not want to see you subjected to the likes of the recent Bill Nye effort (horrid!).