Clickbait titles and thumbnails

[Bouzoo]

On 1/18/2019 at 9:38 PM, JoostinOnline said:

I just got a notification for the latest Techquickie and its one of the worst offenders. I'm unsubscribing.

I find it sad because it's the one channel that I hoped that would still maintain it's professional look. Now the recent thumbnails are atrocious, and few recent titles as well. Just looking at the videos from 9 months ago, quite recognizable white with simple thumbnails, and comparing to white ones, it's horrible. I'll admit that they are trying at least to maintain proper titles, but I wouldn't be shocked if it all went to shit, as it seems all of their channels are. And I find it said because it's the one channel because of which I decided to join this forum. LTT is the only channel that I am left subbed to, but I have a feeling that will change soon as well. 

[JoostinOnline]

9 hours ago, Bouzoo said:

I find it sad because it's the one channel that I hoped that would still maintain it's professional look. Now the recent thumbnails are atrocious, and few recent titles as well. Just looking at the videos from 9 months ago, quite recognizable white with simple thumbnails, and comparing to white ones, it's horrible. I'll admit that they are trying at least to maintain proper titles, but I wouldn't be shocked if it all went to shit, as it seems all of their channels are. And I find it said because it's the one channel because of which I decided to join this forum. LTT is the only channel that I am left subbed to, but I have a feeling that will change soon as well. 

The thumbnails were fine to me. I never paid any attention to them anyway. The titles are very important though. They affect my ability to find and share the videos at a later date, as well as just giving me a good idea of what I'm watching.

 

I made thread proposing a simple change that would be a decent middle ground. I was initially hopeful because there was some positive change. They backtracked though and are even worse than before.

 

Their behavior isn't the kind of company I want to support. I used to watch every video they put out, but I've left all the channels and I'm not going to LTX anymore. Will my leaving affect them? Probably not at all. I'm still happier not supporting a channel that only sees me as a dollar sign. Plenty of other people have messaged to tell me they did the same.

[Spotty]

7 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

The titles are very important though. They affect my ability to find and share the videos at a later date, as well as just giving me a good idea of what I'm watching

This is one of the reasons why I'm so frustrated with their decision to move to vague clickbait titles for the techquickie channel. It means people with a problem or a question searching for answers can't find the videos they need, but it also means that if I'm helping someone in a troubleshooting thread and want to share a tech quickie video to easily explain a topic to someone on the forums I fear that I will be unable to find the relevant video to help that person. 

[Lathlaer]

16 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Will my leaving affect them? Probably not at all. I'm still happier not supporting a channel that only sees me as a dollar sign. Plenty of other people have messaged to tell me they did the same.

Yeah the whole forum could unsubscribe from them right now (with the assumption that every member is already subscribed) and it would barely make a dent in their subs. 

 

LTT just reached 8 million subscribers and while I don't have any data to support it, I have a feeling that the past two months have seen crazy spike in subs. It felt like they were getting 100k subs every other week. 

 

I will probably still remain subbed to LTT but it does leave a bad impression to see vids on TQ get the same treatment. I have never been subbed there though, so there is that. 

[mr moose]

Threads like this just reaffirm for me that the internet was a mistake. 

[JoostinOnline]

3 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Yeah the whole forum could unsubscribe from them right now (with the assumption that every member is already subscribed) and it would barely make a dent in their subs. 

 

LTT just reached 8 million subscribers and while I don't have any data to support it, I have a feeling that the past two months have seen crazy spike in subs. It felt like they were getting 100k subs every other week. 

 

I will probably still remain subbed to LTT but it does leave a bad impression to see vids on TQ get the same treatment. I have never been subbed there though, so there is that. 

Views are what matter, not subscribers. I'm subscribed to a lot of channels that I don't view regularly.

 

TQ was my favorite channel, and I watched every video even though I already knew the answers to most stuff. It was useful for explaining stuff to people though.

[Lathlaer]

5 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Views are what matter, not subscribers. I'm subscribed to a lot of channels that I don't view regularly.

True but usually new spikes in subs will bring more fresh views. They can probably tell that they are reaching 800k-1mil views faster than they used to. Then again, I can be wrong.

[RomHeu]

On 1/17/2019 at 7:55 PM, Jtalk4456 said:

Of course you're going to actively ignore gardening if you dislike gardening. But that's different than knowing you like videos about tech and ignoring it because the name of the video is silly. Ignore what you don't like, that's normal.

I may like gardening with some kind of flowers but not with another. It's the same with technology, which is a vast topic.

 

For example, I'm not interested in an RTX 2060 video review because all I wan't is read AnandTech's article about it. I don't want to have to watch a video for even a few seconds to decide if I'm interested in the content. I have a selective yet large set of subscriptions, but I think I only watch 1 in 10 videos. If I had to watch every video for 10 s to judge if I want to watch would waste a lot of time.

 

Likewise, imagine all the time you'd waste if there weren't relevant titles on news websites, emails, files, etc.

 

I've stopped linear TV and started watching YouTube a lot exactly to choose what I watch.

 

And I'd like to ask again: isn't MKBHD proof that you can get 8 million subscribers and millions of views on each video without clickbait titles and funny faces?

[Jtalk4456]

On 1/20/2019 at 1:24 PM, Romano2K said:

1. I don't want to have to watch a video for even a few seconds to decide if I'm interested in the content.

2. Likewise, imagine all the time you'd waste if there weren't relevant titles on news websites, emails, files, etc.

1. Why not? I mean you do you, but what i'm saying is you're going to miss something you would have liked this way. I'd rather spend a few seconds seeing if i want to keep watching but know i didn't skip something i really like.

2. Are you saying news and emails have relevant titles?? XD

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

i unsubbed largely becuase i wanted to get rid of the clickbait on my youtube subscribtion page.

[RomHeu]

Linus did a video 10 days ago, where he featured this thread, and where he answered some of our questions and complaints.

 

More importantly, he agreed that some titles weren't clear enough about the actual subject.

 

It looks like their new naming system is <"Clicky" title> - <Product name> <Review/First Look/…>, which is totally fine with me.

 

And there are already a few videos I've watched (most of which I'm glad I did) that I wouldn't have watched if there wasn't the 2nd part of the title.

For instance:

• Apple, Please Keep Doing This! – iMac 2019 Review
• They LIED to me! - DDR4 RAM to M.2 SSD Adapter
• Apple won't like this... - Run MacOS on ANY PC (although "Virtualize" instead of "Run" would have been more upfront)

But I'm still waiting for the second part of the title to watch these videos:

• I can never go back...
• How Did HP Fail This Hard?

Thank you Linus Media Group for the change though!

[bradwiggo]

14 minutes ago, Romano2K said:

Linus did a video 10 days ago, where he featured this thread, and where he answered some of our questions and complaints.

  

More importantly, he agreed that some titles weren't clear enough about the actual subject.

 

It looks like their new naming system is <"Clicky" title> - <Product name> <Review/First Look/…>, which is totally fine with me.

 

And there are already a few videos I've watched (most of which I'm glad I did) that I wouldn't have watched if there wasn't the 2nd part of the title.

For instance:

• Apple, Please Keep Doing This! – iMac 2019 Review
• They LIED to me! - DDR4 RAM to M.2 SSD Adapter
• Apple won't like this... - Run MacOS on ANY PC (although "Virtualize" instead of "Run" would have been more upfront)

But I'm still waiting for the second part of the title to watch these videos:

• I can never go back...
• How Did HP Fail This Hard?

Thank you Linus Media Group for the change though!

I do wish they would put the product name first, as often on mobile you can only see the clickbait bit, but I guess it is important to have everyone see the clickbait bit so people who like that see it first. 

[kv]

While the new titles are a somewhat improvement. I do wish he'd take a leaf out of Gamers Nexus' book. Their titles are no-nonese and straight to the point. I'm more likely to click on those and share that. The Linus thumbnails and bait prefixes are still kind of embarrassing at times. At least I appreciate him recognising this is a problem, even if he seems reluctant to really change it.