Facebook and YouTube have always had one problem in common throughout their separate existences: They have always had a problem with updating their website designs. To the average user, the constant changing can be an annoyance, since they would have gotten used to the previous design and see no reason to change it.
However this is where YouTube falls short, because at least Facebook actually knows when they have a stable website design, and stick with it. YouTube appears to have a habit of replacing channel design after channel design, only succeeding in making the website worse and worse.
Now we have the YouTube One Channel. At least with the last website design, terrible as it may have been, there was still a semblance of allowing the user to design their own channel. Now, it appears as if they have just done away with the whole concept of creating original channels and instead, the only original section of YouTube will be the banner at the top.
Devolution indeed, from being able to design an entire channel itself to your liking, to the only sign of originality or creativity being a single banner.
Another problem with the new website design is how finding posts from subscriptions has become more difficult: Before, there used to be an entire unique page dedicated to finding videos posted by people you are subscribed to, just like looking through a list of favourite or liked videos. Now it has been degraded into being a mere feature for the home page, only a small list on the left, which from first glance does not look as if it can be scrolled down, although it can be.
Finally, there is the HTML5 video. Depending on which browser you are using, some videos might not even play at all, only showing something like ‘Your browser does not support this particular video format’. Of course by going to the frequently asked questions we can discover that we are in a HTML5 trial. Although this problem is easy to solve by turning off the HTML5 trial, it still feels a little unprofessional that they would not let us know that we were involved in a trial and whether we have the choice to let it continue.
All in all, YouTube should at least choose a channel design they believe is sound and stick to it, instead of listening to feedback and doing the complete opposite of what that feedback is actually telling them. Any other design will do, just not this one!
