YouTube has pulled down the shutter on Video Responses citing poor response from users. However, all existing video responses made by you or even your fans will remain available as well as accessible.
YouTube blogged that the current click-through rate for Video Responses was down to .0004 percent, which meant that only 4 people out of 1 million were using this service. The company has hence decided to pull down the shutter officially on September 12, 2013. However, YouTube also announced that it was working on a better tool to boost engagement levels for creators. The company stated that it wants to allow users to share video links within comments. This feature will allow both viewers and creators to include additional context for any video, which in turn will encourage more engagement.
If you are an avid video creator or marketer then you can direct your fans to upload videos along with precise titles and hashtags or even descriptions to make it easier for searchers. YouTube has also asked creators to use InVideo Programming in order to make it easier for your audience to locate higher number of videos of your channel.
YouTube may have decided to stop a few services that faced poor response, but has also added several more to make your life a lot easier. For instance, until now, you may have only seen a few social media site-names such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter under the Share button. However, YouTube has now added Tumblr, Reddit, Linkedln, StumbleUpon, Odnoklassniki, and LiveJournal to the existing social media sites.
The company has also dumped the More option as well as buttons that displayed Blogger, MySpace, and Orkut. Surprising, since it was Google that took over Orkut in 2003. MySpace, which is a venture between Justin Timberlake and Specific Media LLC has also been dumped.
Well-known social sites such as Google+, Facebook, and Twitter too now have to compete with upcoming sites such as Reddit, Pinterest, etc. YouTube seems to have included a bouquet of sites that offer varied services to allow sharing of videos. For instance, Odnoklassniki is a Russian social networking site while StumbleUpon is a discovery engine. Linkedln is a networking site aimed at professionals and business while Tumblr is a blogging and social media site that is owned by Yahoo.
This change is certainly noteworthy considering that YouTube has over 1 billion visitors each month that view more than 6 billion hours of video. YouTube has also discarded best practices tips for Twitter and Facebook from its Creator Playbook. On the other hand, it has left the page that explains on ways to leverage Google+ to engage the audience and increase viewership.
So, YouTube has created quite a buzz amongst marketers and viewers by introducing several new features while pulling down the shutter on features that were not being used by many users.