Do you like custom YouTube thumbnails?
This seems a bit random, but what do you think of custom YouTube thumbnails?
I personally don’t like them. The purpose of a thumbnail is to show what’s in the video, not the title card! :roll:
I personally like to be able to put up a little graphic for all my videos. I’ve kept them related to the videos.
I don’t use it often, but it is a useful feature, especially when YouTube’s automatic thumbnail picker picks thumbnails that in my totally honest opinion do not accurately display what is going on in the video (which happens more frequently than you may think, for example a still of your carpet, window, and cat in a video that is about a computer).
I prefer custom thumbnails, but the title cards that huge channels (Smosh, RWJ) use look stupid.
AVGN does that too. We don’t care about the box; we want to see some gameplay!
No offense to James… but whatever. 8)
I don’t mind title cards like that, but I think ones like this:
Look kind of stupid.
That picture at the top kind of disturbs me.
As long as the card provides an accurate description of what’s in the video, I have no problems with it.
Also, most of the internet “Screamers” have a unrelated thumbnail, same thing with “Rick Rolls.” And I agree with prog.
I think it’s nice to have the feature, but it’s interesting how YouTube is moving away from its “one size fits all” approach. When it first started, I think new YouTubers were less intimidated to put themselves out there because everyone’s videos looked crappy. There were no annotations, custom thumbnails, custom channel designs, partnerships, etc. And of course, most people had 360P webcams and no easy way to edit the video to oblivion. I’m not saying that the technological constraints were a good thing, but it kind of created a level playing field for everyone and allowed anyone with interesting content a chance to be seen. It’s kind of like when cable TV first achieved mass adoption and there were lots of crappy public access channels run by people who knew nothing about “pro” TV production. It was a medium less centered around profit-driven creation and actually created new audiences rather than pander to existing ones. I don’t think YouTube will go the way of cable television because there are so many niche communities that continue to do what they do, but I worry that an increasing level of feature creep could eventually send the site to MySpace hell. The reason why Facebook became the new “thing” is because there is less choice in pimping out your profile page and therefore more focus on the content. The more YouTube allows you to make your facade cooler than someone else’s, the more superficial the community will become. I’m sure that Google knows this based on the not-so-distant history of the Internet.
This video gives some interesting perspective:
