In-video annotations to disappear December 14th

[KatyAdelson]

Do both. I do and it works well.

All my newer videos have the links in the description, but editing my older descriptions may cause the videos to lose their higher search rankings. I might just have to if I want to keep things consistent, but it just kind of stinks...

 

[just Moto]

All my newer videos have the links in the description, but editing my older descriptions may cause the videos to lose their higher search rankings. I might just have to if I want to keep things consistent, but it just kind of stinks...

I've had to edit my descriptions many times over the years. I even went through and added all my links like merch/social media/website etc to every video that didn't have it about a year ago. Nothing was affected.

 

[KatyAdelson]

I've had to edit my descriptions many times over the years. I even went through and added all my links like merch/social media/website etc to every video that didn't have it about a year ago. Nothing was affected.

That's encouraging to hear! =) I'll edit them later this week and cross my fingers everything stays close to the same. I wonder why YouTube feels the need to turn them off entirely? I'd imagine there are a ton of videos out there where the uploader no longer manages the channel. All of their video links and additional information will disappear overnight. =/

 

[just Moto]

That's encouraging to hear! =) I'll edit them later this week and cross my fingers everything stays close to the same. I wonder why YouTube feels the need to turn them off entirely? I'd imagine there are a ton of videos out there where the uploader no longer manages the channel. All of their video links and additional information will disappear overnight. =/

I guess it's just business optimization.

For what it's worth, I had my merch store link misspelt in my descriptions for about 3 months and couldn't work out why I wasn't selling much. Then a subscriber message me to let me know, I fixed it and sales quadrupled. I don't think those pop ups in the middle of a video do that much because people want to watch the video. Not click on them.

 

[Switchbox]

They should have made the cards and endscreens from the beginning, and future proofed everything on the site.

 

[Slothound]

This will be funny as I used to create on screen graphics for my videos and then put a clear annotation over it after uploading. This was an attempt to make things look clean and more professional. Now my old homemade end cards will still be there but with nothing to click. Haha.

 

[Crown]

I actually just read the article after someone on Twitter pointed out how terribly written it was XD. It's actually featured videos that are going, not in-video annotation, but if EposVox didn't point it out on Twitter I would have thought it was annotations too.

I agree, the article isn't clear and even Youtube's announcement isn't particularly clear either.

Normal annotations were discontinued a while ago so it's not that.

I've done a bit of digging and dicovered that what they are discussing is the "featured content" option (ie the little pop up thumbnail of a featured video that will appear across all videos on a channel) -> https://www.youtube.com/featured_content On that page, there is the reminder message that they're discontinuing the option on 14th December so it's definitely that. - I'm actually quite disappointed - It is / was a great feature to promote a channel's newest upload. I find it hard to believe that YT are stopping it due to low CTR - People must have been abusing it. Shame.

 

[Stike96]

I agree, the article isn't clear and even Youtube's announcement isn't particularly clear either.

Normal annotations were discontinued a while ago so it's not that.

I've done a bit of digging and dicovered that what they are discussing is the "featured content" option (ie the little pop up thumbnail of a featured video that will appear across all videos on a channel) -> https://www.youtube.com/featured_content On that page, there is the reminder message that they're discontinuing the option on 14th December so it's definitely that. - I'm actually quite disappointed - It is / was a great feature to promote a channel's newest upload. I find it hard to believe that YT are stopping it due to low CTR - People must have been abusing it. Shame.

I haven't seen many people using them really, can't remember the last time I saw one in someone's video. It was hidden away so lots of people probably didn't even know that it existed.

 

[Zerodecoole]

this is so sad, I have videos in which I used annotations instead of subtitles and some of them, such as the speech bubble, took me some time to get the timing right as a child

I remember old videos that contained animations of stick figures climbing over annotations

gonna miss these old features

 

[markkaz]

I'm not confident that I understand what they are discontinuing. It seems like they are talking about Annotations but using different terminology. If they are discontinuing all Annotations, including the ones that we would put at the ends of our videos, I'm going to find my most popular videos and put End Cards in their place.