Clickbait titles and thumbnails

[crystal6tak]

On 1/10/2019 at 6:20 PM, wkdpaul said:

Seeing as we've been getting threads like this for a year now, I would say it's already too late!!!

I don't remember the titles being THAT bad though.

 

I've since unsubscribed a few months ago. I completely agree with Rohith_Kumar_Sp, clickbait titles/thumbnails are fine, as long as I still know what the video is about. Not having the product name at all in the title/thumbnail is just stupid

[Canada EH]

2 hours ago, crystal6tak said:

I don't remember the titles being THAT bad though.

 

I've since unsubscribed a few months ago. I completely agree with Rohith_Kumar_Sp, clickbait titles/thumbnails are fine, as long as I still know what the video is about. Not having the product name at all in the title/thumbnail is just stupid

That is part of Linus' deal though, he wants you to click on the video so you will then find out what the video is actually about. Its just Linus wanting to get more clicks out of his video's. It is backfiring on him though.

[Kamjam66xx]

15 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

That is part of Linus' deal though, he wants you to click on the video so you will then find out what the video is actually about. Its just Linus wanting to get more clicks out of his video's. It is backfiring on him though.

Judging by how fast they get around 1,000,000 views on the last few videos, i think theyre doing fine.

[Gadrane]

They do this to increase viewership, simple as that. I watch LTT videos because I know they’re of a high quality, each and every one (maybe aside from the weird iPhone rant one lol). It makes complete business sense for Linus to present his thumbnails and video names in such a way and with the quality of his videos I don’t even need to see the title or the thumbnail, I’ll watch it regardless. 

 

If you guys have such a problem with his videos then I’d suggest simply moving on and viewing other content, nobody’s forcing you to watch anything you don’t enjoy.

[Canada EH]

4 hours ago, Gadrane said:

viewing other content,

We have been for quite some time. One thing about quality is the microphone issue.

[Gadrane]

5 hours ago, Canada EH said:

We have been for quite some time. One thing about quality is the microphone issue.

Do that then, I don’t see why you’d waste your time complaining about it

[Canada EH]

15 hours ago, Gadrane said:

Do that then

Yes watch many other things on Youtube, like Ben Shapiro, Tested with Adam Savage, aVe channel, plus some to do with K2 and recently how to melt plastic down like HDPE in milk jugs. Lots of video's out there to watch that is for sure, just not Linus. It is like when I found out that the Subway owner, who owns 5+ franchises does not pay his employees, who are immigrants, overtime, I stopped purchasing my subs from his stores. I would say, easily $15/day for 20 days out of the month, so $300 that the Subway owner is not getting.

[Salv8 (sam)]

On 1/11/2019 at 8:13 PM, Bouzoo said:

I hands down refuse to watch previous videos with no mention of the product in the title. 

it also makes it extremely hard to find when referring to an old video...

for example, i wanted to find a video where Linus looks at the XION XON-310_BK case for a friend who was wanting a new case for his desktop

the video in question is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdtBkN3vrpQ

so my first action was to search their channel for the key words: "XION XON-310_BK"

nothing.... (when i do it now it shows the video but it was about a year ago when i did it and i think the search algorithm has improved since then)

my next action was to google: "linus XION XON-310_BK"

nothing... (now it shows up as the last result on the first page, again improved search algorithms since i last did it)

for newer videos like the mining GPU hack video and the server room upgrade and fix video, it's impossible since their are no key words allowing it to separate from other videos with the same keywords but have nothing to do with the video that you are trying to find... (the server video is a prime example, they have NO key words relating to "server, server room, server room upgrade, server room networking, networking, server room maintenance, linustechtips" etc, literately, look at the video description there is no keywords allowing for easier searching with a search engine)

it's a mess...

[Canada EH]

14 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

it also makes it extremely hard to find when referring to an old video...

Yes you are right and for what? The almighty dollar aka more clicks on the video to figure out what exactly is the video talking about, so Linus knows a certain amount will click on it no matter what.

[Lathlaer]

On 1/11/2019 at 12:37 AM, Canada EH said:

thats what a bunch of us did, including me

Yes. So you keep saying. Every time you have the chance, like a preacher on a wooden box to everyone within earshot, willing or not

[corrado33]

On 1/10/2019 at 9:20 AM, RollinLower said:

and many people have expressed their disapproval of these tactics. yet the numbers don't lie, these clickbait titles work and as long as they bring in more clicks and cash LTT is going to keep using them.

LMG is a business, eventough their videos are all pretty laidback and stuff, don;t forget that Linus has a whole staff of people that need to eat.

I don't really think the whole "LMG is a business" is a good excuse to put out worse content just because "it works." LMG has hired dozens of new people over the years and yet the quality of their content has gone down. They could have easily stayed smaller, therefore having to pay fewer wages and therefore woudln't have to put out a million shit videos with crappy clickbait titles.

 

Chicken and egg type problem: Hire people to produce videos.... need more videos to pay those people... hire more people....to produce more videos....

 

What this tells me is that the average return on a LMG video isn't enough to cover salary and operating costs so they keep trying to "make it better" by hiring more people to try to make better content, but it doesn't work. 

 

One does not need a 30,000 square foot warehouse to produce tech videos. See... every other tech youtuber out there...

[RollinLower]

1 hour ago, corrado33 said:

I don't really think the whole "LMG is a business" is a good excuse to put out worse content just because "it works." LMG has hired dozens of new people over the years and yet the quality of their content has gone down. They could have easily stayed smaller, therefore having to pay fewer wages and therefore woudln't have to put out a million shit videos with crappy clickbait titles.

 

Chicken and egg type problem: Hire people to produce videos.... need more videos to pay those people... hire more people....to produce more videos....

 

What this tells me is that the average return on a LMG video isn't enough to cover salary and operating costs so they keep trying to "make it better" by hiring more people to try to make better content, but it doesn't work. 

 

One does not need a 30,000 square foot warehouse to produce tech videos. See... every other tech youtuber out there...

why stay small tough? staying small means you stay in the same spot for ever. if you have the opportunity to invest and grow you should see a return on more cash flow and eventually more profit. it's business 101.

also, content and production values have gone up massively since the LTT kitchen days. it's just the clickbaity titles and thumbnails that have changed. and the change paid off in more clicks and more views. ofcourse they are going to keep doing it.

[Emberstone]

I just stopped watching LTT altogether. Channels like GamersNexus and Hardware Unboxed do what LTT used to be known for, but better these days.

 

I only come to the forums for the community and discussion as it is, thankfully, still informative and tech-focused here.

[AlexTheGreatish]

Click bait sucks. But not nearly as bad as working super hard on a video, titling it honestly, and then having it bomb.  Unfortunately with how YouTube works (and how more casual tech youtube watchers work) it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to title something like "Product X Review", and hopefully with the thumbnail you should be able to roughly figure out what the video about.

[corrado33]

3 hours ago, RollinLower said:

why stay small tough? staying small means you stay in the same spot for ever. if you have the opportunity to invest and grow you should see a return on more cash flow and eventually more profit. it's business 101.

also, content and production values have gone up massively since the LTT kitchen days. it's just the clickbaity titles and thumbnails that have changed. and the change paid off in more clicks and more views. ofcourse they are going to keep doing it.

Yes but at what cost? LMG built a nice tech community based on unbiased reviews and a general love and exploration of tech. And it showed.... in their videos. Now... Now their videos come across as advertising. Every.... single.... one of them. Whether it's ragging on one company (and therefore advertising for it's competitor) or simply saying "this product is great." I'd love to see more creative videos, but all the videos topics now-a-day are just "LOOK A PRODUCT" or "LOOK A SHITTY PRODUCT." The videos aren't fun. It's not Linus messing with tech anymore. It's Linus trying to make money. Do I blame him? No. Do I like it? Also no. But that doesn't matter because I'm not the one to which new videos are aimed.

 

This topic has been covered time and time again. Their response to me last time was that doing all these clickbaity and product review videos will allow more creative content. But we've.... yet to see that. Just more and more reviews and clickbait. LMG has transitioned from a group of like-minded people who enjoy playing with technology and sharing it with the world to an all outright advertising firm. And you know, they did a damn good job at that. Unfortunately it just means they can't produce the content that most of us (on the forums) want to see. The CREATIVE videos, the fun videos. Not the product reviews, not the clickbait. And especially not the negativity. In my personal opinion LMG videos have gotten so much more negative in the last year. And sure, yeah, it's great to be honest, but their videos just aren't... fun. LMG seems to want to thrive on negative videos, because people love when tech youtubers rag on something/some company. "Give it to the man" blah blah blah.

 

So people will tell me not to watch them to which I respond.... well... I haven't. I've only watched one (EDIT: 2, the mining card video was kinda cool) their last 20 (and that's not counting their other channels other than LTT) to completion. Some of them I'll click on, skip to the middle of the vid, see if it looks interesting, then click away. The one I watched was probably the LEAST produced, LEAST prepared video about them fixing their server, which was fun to watch, because it was linus playing with technology. I'm still waiting on a conclusion to the $100,000 PC.

 

Right now Linus faces the problem of "Do I produce videos that are fun and interesting at the expense of views or do I produce videos that I know will make the money we need." The answer for every business owner ever is the latter. Unfortunately.... Linus's fun videos are only attractive to people like us, people who love tech, people who are geeks, people who will sit through a freaking 6 part series of linus and friends put together a server room, or watch Linus for an hour fail at putting a VM server machine together. Linus's money making videos (reviews) have a MUCH... MUCH larger audience, and therefore afford higher views because they still (kinda) apply to geeks, but also apply to common (non geek) people interested in that topic, or common people interested in that product, or simply a less tech savvy person. Much of the stuff the big geeks of us out here are like "well yeah... duh" but that could be good info for someone less knowledgeable. And those long, very specific videos that we find cool? Yeah those aren't easy to produce. Sure they have a bit less editing than the more produced, shorter vids, but they still take a shit ton of time to edit. Try it yourself. I'd say that for an equal length video, a "casual" video will take 75%-80% of the time it takes to produce a "professional" video. They still have to find the cut points, they still have to make sure the audio is matched and on time, they still have to arrange the clips, and most importantly, they still have to TRY to make the video interesting. And those are all the hard and long parts of editing. 

 

LTT changed when LMG started. Back when LTT started, they were a TECH company that happened to dabble in media. Now they are a MEDIA company that does videos on tech. I think that change, from Tech->Media marked the change where we started complaining about clickbait and other things. 

 

The only thing we can really hope for is that LMG gets big enough that they can have a small group of people produce the "fun" videos we like so much regardless of how well (or not well) the videos do. 

[Tristerin]

Another thread on this topic, another time to announce where I sit on this topic:

 

I haven't watched an LTT video sans the one with his receptionist calling the PC vendors for RAM seating walkthroughs in a LONG time.  That's also lost revenue.  Once Youtube starts paying for TIME VIDEO IS WATCHED (I.E. that means they can fit ads into it) not just how many people click it we will have another change in how they want to Serve Us Up our videos.

 

I prefer LTT, now I prefer Jayz. 

[Canada EH]

1 hour ago, Tristerin said:

Another thread on this topic, another time to announce where I sit on this topic:

 

I haven't watched an LTT video sans the one with his receptionist calling the PC vendors for RAM seating walkthroughs in a LONG time.  That's also lost revenue.  Once Youtube starts paying for TIME VIDEO IS WATCHED (I.E. that means they can fit ads into it) not just how many people click it we will have another change in how they want to Serve Us Up our videos.

 

I prefer LTT, now I prefer Jayz. 

Yup thats the way they should do it, time watched, not clicks, and if the viewer watches an advertisement or not or if they have Adblocker or skip it. I do not know the one you speak of receptionist calling vendors for RAM, I dont pay attention to any of the silliness that Linus does. Linus has to rake in the cash while he can because people get sick and tired more quickly of silliness like that.

[Canada EH]

23 hours ago, Lathlaer said:

Yes. So you keep saying.

Yes. Because people keep asking.

[Tristerin]

12 minutes ago, Canada EH said:

Yup thats the way they should do it, time watched, not clicks, and if the viewer watches an advertisement or not or if they have Adblocker or skip it. I do not know the one you speak of receptionist calling vendors for RAM, I dont pay attention to any of the silliness that Linus does. Linus has to rake in the cash while he can because people get sick and tired more quickly of silliness like that.

Linus is winning no doubt - and bro, tbh, I personally don't support him - BUT, as a businessman hes doing what is "todays" thing.  And it works so I cant blame him (my gym doesn't have to post that way on YT, people watch fights or not lol) - but what we should do is not support it on a personal level, putting our proverbial money where our mouth is - best way to get change in Capitalism LOL.

 

EDIT - I should clarify, I don't support him in this avenue of revenue.  I like LTT and this forum a lot.

[Canada EH]

8 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

people watch fights

I like to watch fights, especially UFC because its the real deal, no fakery like WWF wrestling. Boxing probably has seen a decline as its not a multifaceted skill set like grappling, kicking, punches, elbows, knees. In a street fight, both skills are good to have because average people dont know how to fight. I think Linus should do a video, for FunnyChannel of MMA type fighting. Get some makeup and make a silly face that is bruised up, cut, and bleeding, even dripping blood. How often does the LMG HQ wash their props? Where does one even buy a white lab coat? Why not do a filler video on the prop room itself. Would rake in tons of cash, no doubt about that.

[Ryanwake]

YouTube.com 

Is this what u we're asking for

[Jtalk4456]

On 1/10/2019 at 11:17 AM, Romano2K said:

I just wanted to say that I never click on content with clickbait titles or dumb thumbnails by principle.

besides the obvious "but youtube algorithm demands it" and "it's here to stay but it's annoying" comments, i just want to bring a point with this statement. What principle are you following? If you genuinely don't like the content of the video, fine. No need to watch something you don't like. But disregarding what might be a very well produced informative video just because the title is designed to get viewers seems a bit silly to me. It's a textbook example of judging a book by it's cover. Especially when it's pretty common knowledge that they do this to meet the platform they are posting on. Taking the stance that in order to be watched they need to have proper professional titles is pushy in my opinion. And it doesn't make much sense either. If the title of a video was Dell XPS blah blah model number Review, I wouldn't watch it honestly because i haven't owned a laptop in years, so it would strike me as irrelevant. But many times I've watched one of their clickbait titles not knowing it was about a laptop and enjoying the video because I enjoy how he comments on the design itself, not just specs. He puts a lot of thought about what really matters to him and I like that, even if I couldn't give a crap about the XPS whatever. I came for the content, not for the title of the video. And I'm going to keep watching even if the titles are silly, because that's not really what's important

[Totallycasual]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

What principle are you following?

For me personally, i just don't want to be part of the data set that says X tactic = more views, maybe if pulling the stupid faces, bold colorful cartoon words and clickbait titles don't perform how they once did, we can get back to normal again?  

 

Wishful thinking i know, but i like to back my opinions up with actions instead of spouting off and then going with the herd anyway. 

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

What principle are you following?

For the past year they've been emphasizing that the only reason they use clickbait titles is because so many people click on them. It's basically a voting system. If we want reasonable titles, we need to stop supporting their clickbait.

[corrado33]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

besides the obvious "but youtube algorithm demands it" and "it's here to stay but it's annoying" comments, i just want to bring a point with this statement. What principle are you following? If you genuinely don't like the content of the video, fine. No need to watch something you don't like. But disregarding what might be a very well produced informative video just because the title is designed to get viewers seems a bit silly to me. It's a textbook example of judging a book by it's cover. Especially when it's pretty common knowledge that they do this to meet the platform they are posting on. Taking the stance that in order to be watched they need to have proper professional titles is pushy in my opinion. And it doesn't make much sense either. If the title of a video was Dell XPS blah blah model number Review, I wouldn't watch it honestly because i haven't owned a laptop in years, so it would strike me as irrelevant. But many times I've watched one of their clickbait titles not knowing it was about a laptop and enjoying the video because I enjoy how he comments on the design itself, not just specs. He puts a lot of thought about what really matters to him and I like that, even if I couldn't give a crap about the XPS whatever. I came for the content, not for the title of the video. And I'm going to keep watching even if the titles are silly, because that's not really what's important

You have circular reasoning here.

 

You say that LTT generally has "very well produced and informative videos", so therefore you'll still watch a video with a clickbait title, but then you say you won't watch the video if they title it honestly. The "very well produced and informative" reason was why you clicked on the clickbait title.... why would it not be the reason you'd click on a non-clickbait title. If you like the way linus reviews things, shouldn't you be clicking on ALL of the videos, regardless of title?