YouTube is trying to stop people from moving from the YouTube platform by launching its own community platform. This platform has to compete with Facebook and other social networks. In the last years users of social networks and especially users of Facebook are placing more and more videos on their timeline. Even live videos and 360 videos are getting more and more popular. This is an alarming trend for YouTube, as it sees more and more people abandoning their website. YouTube community has to keep the people from moving.
The problem for YouTube is that the owners of YouTube channels cannot really interact with their fans. The only way to interact with each other is via the comment section under a video. That is why many popular YouTube channels also have a Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram account. Because it is way more easier to interact with your fans via this way.
The YouTube community feature makes it able to interact more with your friends or community. A popular vlogger can now post thoughts and other information on its community wall. Their fans can comment on those posts. This is similar as with a Facebook timeline.
The owner of YouTube, Google, tried something similar before and failed miserable. Ever heard of Google+? This social network was launched a couple years ago and had to compete with Facebook. But nowadays no one uses this social network. Creating a own social network platform for YouTube is thus risky. Is YouTube not too late? Will people actually use this feature? The beta test that YouTube conducted was overall positive. Most people liked the feature and also used it. But there are also critical notes about the ‘social network’. It is for example not possible to share things. So if your idol post something on his wall you are not able to share the post on your wall. In the end, YouTube tries too keep the people on YouTube instead of losing them to Facebook. Do you think they will? Or is it too little too late? What do you think?
References:
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/14/youtube-becomes-more-social-with-the-community-tab/
/https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/youtube-gets-its-own-social-network-with-the-launch-of-youtube-community/
/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suXCeLSLMe0
