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YouTube To Discontinue Video Annotations Because They Never Worked On Mobile (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new dept.

You know those notes found plastered on many YouTube videos, often asking for you to "CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE?" Well, they're called annotations and they're being replaced with what YouTube calls "End Screen and Cards," which are mobile-friendly tools that let content creators poll their audience, link to merchandise, recommend videos, and more. Unlike annotations, they work on mobile and are designed to be less obnoxious to viewers. The Verge reports: YouTube says it made this change primarily because annotations didn't work on mobile and most viewers found them obnoxious and unhelpful. The change takes effect on May 2nd, and existing annotations will continue to show up when using the desktop browser version of YouTube. YouTube annotations have felt increasingly outdated and out of place. The small text boxes were meant as a way to let creators link to other videos, write in little jokes, and add ancillary information to a video much like a hyperlink or footnote of sorts. But over the years, annotation use has drastically fallen off, by 70 percent, YouTube product manager Muli Salem says. In fact, a majority of viewers interact with annotations only to close them, so the boxes don't obstruct the video screen. Many users turn them off altogether. So now YouTube is investing entirely in End Screens and Cards, and making both tools easier to use and faster to implement.

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    YouTube is moving from something that is annoying but at least only is found on desktops to something equally annoying that is -thank god- cross platform. Try hitting that close button on a 5.5" screen with your thumb.

  2. Sigh. by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Video site shocked when people just want to use it to watch the damn video.

  3. I hope they can be disabled by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Generally speaking, the first thing that I do when I watch any Youtube video is to turn off annotations and change the speed to 125%. For some slow talkers, I change the speed to 150%. This is to try to get close to the speed that I would have read the same information had the video just be a textual website.

    As for the annotations, 99% of them are useless, annoying popups that distract me from the video. I can't imagine that the end screens and cards would be any more relevant.