do you have in mind those popup boxes with links or comments that appear while you watch a Youtube video? Well, they will soon disappear (although we will continue to have access to that information). Specifically in January 2019, from the 15th, because the youtube annotations they no longer seem useful to the platform in its current use.
When annotations emerged in 2008 they seemed very useful to provide more information to the user by allowing them to go to other urls or other videos on the channel, for example, while viewing the video and thus generating a increased interaction. But with the evolution of YouTube, and mainly with mobile use, they have ceased to be used as such.
Why do Youtube annotations disappear?
The platform itself indicates that annotations did not work on mobile, and that this device is key for them due to the constant increase in its use to consume videos. Specifically, they point out that when they launched the annotation editor in 2008, mobile access still did not have a great presence, but that today 60% of playback time comes from this device. For this reason, in 2017 they began removing the option to edit the annotations and create new ones to take steps until the current disappearance; in which we will not see an entry again.
In reality, YouTube does not make any decisions without convincing data behind it, and that is that its users closed on average 12 annotations before clicking in one of them. What made it clear that this objective of interaction and access to more information with which they were born is no longer valid.
Is the future in the cards?
Cards and End Screens they will probably absorb the role that hitherto had the annotationsand it is that in reality through them the same information and interaction can be offered to the reader in a more elegant and less intrusive way.
In fact, your data indicates that with the use of cards the annotations have been reduced by up to 70%. In the case of these cards, Youtube offers the creator of the video several options when they want to upload them, being able to direct them to: a website, merchandising, a fundraiser or crowdfunding, a video or playlist, promote a channel or put a link.
Another interesting format on YouTube are end screens that direct the user to other content, which also allows them to provide information or lead them to another video on the channel. Its ease of use compared to the almost obsolete annotations part of the fact that it is up to 10 times faster to edit and even allows you to import them from other videos.
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