The Unbearable Awesomeness Of Being

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Hooray For The Person Of The Year

Google removed Youtube's Add To Groups functionality in October 2007.

I know this because it was the last date anyone that isn't me added a video to my Youtube Group. I don't blame them.

For those of you that only care about Youtube as a way to embed videos on your blogs, the groups are a way for multiple users to contribute to a single playlist.

Before the removal of the Add To Groups link, the process involved three clicks from the main Youtube video page:

1) Click on Add to Groups
2) Click on the group you want the video added to
3) Click on OK

The process was done automatically without leaving the page you're on. Now, adding a video requires at least ten clicks and a happy jaunt through eight pages.

1) click on Add to Favorites.
2) click on what favorites list you want to add it to.
3) click on OK.
4) click on your username to go to your Profile page. (page 2)
5) click on Groups to go to your Groups page. (page 3)
6) click on the group you want to add the video to. (page 4)
7) click on Add Videos. (page 5)
8) click on the playlist you want to get the video from. (page 6)
Optional step: more than 10 videos in that playlist? start clicking 'next'. No, there is not a 'last' button. (pages 7, 8, 9...)
9) click on the checkbox next to the video you want to add.
10) click on Add Video. (one more page because this certainly does not use ajax)

This if you started from the standard page - an embedded video requires three more clicks and a paste operation. And, of course, people can't subscribe to updates from groups, as opposed to personal playlists. This from a site that calls itself Web 2.0.

Actually, this is very in the Google spirit (don't put complicated things in the interface that might take time off you coding neat things) and in the Web 2.0 spirit. Web 2.0 is about two things:
  • Gather information from everyone to yourself;
  • Send information from yourself to everyone.
Any way to do projects in groups smaller than infinity is unsupported. del.icio.us is firmly plugged into your Google username. The 'communities' of social networking sites have a badge for you to display in your page and maybe a little 4chan-style message board for people to shout at each other, without any meaningful organization.

Web 2.0 is all about you. Maybe web 3.0 will be about us.

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