- Has a target date been set
for the end of the classic studio?
(chuckling)
- Yes.
- [Man] vidIQ.
- [Woman] vidIQ.
- [Man] Vidiq.com.
- Oh, Tom, little tease.
Hello, folks.
Welcome back to vidIQ.
And you're here because you want to grow
your YouTube channel.
And in order to do that, you need to know
what's happening at YouTube.
So we decided to ask them.
First and foremost,
Tom Leung is the Director of Product Management at YouTube.
That means he's one of the top people responsible
for many of the things that we use as video creators.
Such as the upload process, YouTube analytics,
and the mobile application, amongst many more.
On top of all of this, Tom is one of the hosts
of Creator Insider, the YouTube channel run
by YouTube employees, that's a fantastic resource
for us video creators.
Because they're always releasing news
about what tools are coming out, and diving deep
into existing tools to help us learn and understand
how the YouTube universe works.
If you haven't already subscribed to that channel,
I recommend you do so now.
The link is up here and in the video description.
Because what you see in this video is just a snippet
of what you can get from their channel.
Now, as you well know, as a creator,
YouTube is going through a huge transition.
From the classic studio to the beta studio,
which has been going on for almost two years now.
Some of you love it, some of you hate it.
But ultimately, we'll all be usin' it
by the end of the year.
At least, we think so.
And that was one of the many questions
I put to Tom, during our livestream interview.
If you want to watch the full livestream,
which was about an hour, check out the video link over here.
But what I've done is condensed that interview down
into some of the meatiest topics
that are most important to you.
So, let's take a look.
It's now starting to roll out, the new,
I don't know if we're gonna call it
the new beta upload flow, but yeah,
I was just wondering what you can tell us about that,
at the moment.
- Initially, it'll just be available to,
I think right now it's maybe available to like,
1% of studio beta users.
If they click on the uploads from the studio beta.
Well, right now, it's a very small percentage.
It will then, the next phase will be, you know, maybe 10%?
And then, at some point, it'll be just the, like, open beta.
Which means like, you can still use
the classic upload experience, but if you wanna try
the new thing, you can.
But we're at the early days, with uploads flow.
I will say I've been using it.
And I'm one of the early brave souls, you know.
I feel like it's a much cleaner, more organized flow.
And the other thing is, that classic uploads flow
was built in a very different time for YouTube.
You know, where, as an example,
now we tell people, hey, you should probably,
especially if you're monetizing,
and you're concerned about, you know,
classifiers or anything like that.
You should upload as unlisted first.
And then see how it's going.
If anything comes up, try and address it.
And then flip it to public.
But that's not really supported in the classic upload flow.
You kinda have to like, fight it, to make it do that.
And so, what we've said, is like, all right,
so for the new uploads flow, it should represent kind of,
YouTube as we are, and as we envision us going.
And it should support these best practices,
so they're not like, little tricks of the trade,
but it's just part of how it works.
- Is it like one screen, still?
Or is it, would it be more like a wizard?
- It'll probably be more of like a step-step experience.
Like a wizard-y kind of thing.
What we're facing is a product development question,
which is, okay, do you try and build the, you know,
singing and dancing, all bells and all whistles uploads,
and then let people use it,
and get rid of the classic upload?
Or do you build like, a very solid, slightly improved,
but you know, very, very kind of just core work flow
of the new uploads?
And then you add on the integrated editing experience.
And then you add on the advanced, like,
pre-flight check experience.
And so, we've taken the latter approach,
which is let's have a really good new uploads flow,
that does everything that the old one did,
and maybe a little bit more.
And then, over time, let's add in these more
big ticket items.
But the good news is, because the new uploads flow
is built on the new tech stack,
it will allow us to add those things way faster,
and that old uploads flow, we wouldn't be able
to do any of that stuff.
- A/B thumbnail testing.
Is it happening, and when?
- Short answer is it is in active exploration.
But the caveat is, a lot of things are
in active exploration.
And maybe only a third of those things make it
to you know, broad production.
But I personally would love to see it.
- Impressions and click-through rate.
Is it coming to the mobile app?
- We have been very focused on making the studio beta
as good as we can.
That's the same organization that also is responsible
for the mobile app.
I do anticipate that towards the end of this year,
you'll start to see us be able to spend more
of our resources on the mobile app.
And certainly next year.
I think it's only a matter of time
before impressions, and that kind of stuff comes to mobile.
It's just a question of when.
- Will there ever be a way to insert cards
and end screens in the mobile app?
- Yeah, I mean I wouldn't rule it out.
I would also say that, when it comes to the mobile app,
I think we're gonna prioritize things that we imagine
creators have to do on the go.
And you could argue, like, hey,
maybe they would add end screens on the go.
But they would definitely wanna check their analytics
on the go.
They would most likely wanna maybe engage more productively
with comments on the go.
And they may also want to be alerted,
and know about any issues with their channel, on the go.
And I would probably prioritize those types of things
before mobile end screen insertion.
- One here about comments.
Why can't we simply, with one click,
delete all comments held for review?
So I think that's almost like trying to remove spam,
and everything, in one click.
- I have asked for the same exact feature.
Because on Creator Insider, there's so many,
and you just scan it, and you're like,
yeah, there's no way I don't wanna approve these.
But I don't wanna manually click through.
Like, it's very annoying.
So, I think that will happen.
The challenge there is that the team that owns comments,
like, they have a lotta other stuff goin' on.
They wanna improve the viewer experience for comments.
They wanna improve the quality of the spam filter.
They wanna make it more easy for people to find
kind of, relevant comments.
So, but I agree with you.
That would be a great feature.
And it does align with one of the studio beta's missions,
which is to really make your very common,
what we call critical user journeys,
as easy as possible.
- Some people say that it's not a unified experience
for comments.
So people are asking of a way to put all of these comments
in one place to better manage them.
- I will tell you this.
That the same organization that would do
the comment unification, is also the one
that would do the clear all experience.
And also the one that's doing, like what about,
what if you wanted to, some people have said,
hey, how come I can't filter all my comments
by my subscribers?
So I can reply to the subscribers.
Or my oldest subscribers.
Or my best subscribers.
Same team.
So, quick answer is yes, I think a unified
comment experience would be great.
I would agree.
And we talked about that.
- Eh, kind of like a viewer profile,
so it might be showing, we can see a list
of who subscribed to the channel,
that's pretty much a new tool on the widget.
But maybe showing how many videos they've watched
on the channel.
How many comments they've posted on the channel.
- Really cool idea.
There's not a simple answer on this one.
Because it's not clear that the viewer
would be comfortable with the creator seeing that
about them.
So you'd have to make sure that the viewer's
giving permission for us to share that.
Or maybe we couldn't say, this subscriber watched six times,
but we could say oh, out of all of your subscribers,
this percentage are watching every upload you have,
but and this percentage is like, kind of casual.
But when it comes down to the individual viewer,
I think we are really careful about protecting
their privacy, and the trust that they have in YouTube.
Because in the long run, like, that's good
for creators too.
- Has a target date been set for the end
of the classic studio?
- Hmm.
Yes.
But, it really depends on the performance
of the studio beta.
When we reach that, let's say, out of one to 10,
let's say we're at a seven.
Like, maybe when we get to an eight,
I think it would be time to kind of say,
okay let's make the leap.
I would be surprised if people were using classic
as their default experience you know,
by the end of this year.
I don't think they will be.
You know, maybe parts of it will still be accessible
through studio beta, if there's things
that we're still working on.
Anyone who's spending time learning classic,
I don't think that's a good use of time.
- Often when you do decommission tools,
you will give like a banner warning.
And I assume you're gonna do that the same
with the Creator Studios.
- We've been putting all kinds of notifications
that hey, classic will be going away.
I think you'll see us kind of dial it up
a little bit every month.
The big milestone will be when we remove the escape hatch
from studio beta into classic.
And we will definitely be very clear
when that is going away.
That's not gonna happen in the next couple of months,
for sure.
But it will happen.
And I would not be surprised if it happens
you know, towards the end of this year.
- Well, wasn't that all really interesting?
I assume if you're still watching, you felt the same.
Let us know in the comments below,
by saying #imstillwatching and what you found
most fascinating about that quick insight
into Tom's work on YouTube.
I think the most interesting points
that I got from the interview is that the classic studio,
as good as it has been,
is on its last technological legs.
Even if YouTube wanted to introduce new features,
that technology just cannot support it.
Yes, there is gonna be a difficult transition period,
but to be fair to YouTube, they've given us now
about a year's crossover time.
And I think that's a fair amount for us video creators.
The mobile creator studio app, on the other hand,
has taken a bit of a beating,
because the same team works on both.
So, if you want any more mobile apps,
you may have to wait until the new studio is fit and ready.
And now that Tom works on his own YouTube channel,
he can appreciate some of the creative struggles
that we have.
Such as with the spam comments.
Folks, even if you don't want to,
start usin' the creator studio.
There are some fantastic analytics on there,
and I think the channel management is improving,
now that the upload workflow is available
to some creators like us.
If you don't do it now, in six months,
you're gonna have that same experience
you find on Twitter and FaceBook,
where suddenly everything changes,
and you're trying to adapt for the next coupla' weeks.
And then, you can't even remember
what the old layout looks like.
Also, I just wanna give huge props to Tom,
who came onto vidIQ for this interview,
and for YouTube in general, for making
a very concerted effort to improve their communication.
There is still work to be done,
but I think Tom and the Creator Insider team
are a highlight of their attempts to do that.
As I said at the top of this video,
this is just a snippet of the interview I did with Tom.
The full interview is over here.
And for more beginner's guides
on the new creative studio,
we've got a big playlist down there.
Thank you very much for watching.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.