Following in the footsteps of companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, YouTube this week confirmed that it is "experimenting" with a way to organize its users Subscription Feeds that removes reverse chronological order and uses algorithms to "personalize" the video order. The news came from the @TeamYouTube Twitter account after it responded to a disgruntled user (via iGeneration).

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YouTube's Subscription Feed traditionally begins with a "Today" banner, presenting users with a reverse chronological list of every video that has been posted by the YouTubers they subscribe to, going back to "Yesterday," "This Week," "This Month," etc. For those in the experiment, this order is replaced with what Team YouTube calls a "personalized order," which appears to use a viewer's watch history and other factors to recommend videos from their subscriptions that the company thinks the user will want to watch.

YouTube already presents "Recommended" videos on its homepage and in the sidebar of other videos, leading many YouTubers to respond negatively to the change of the last chronological list of videos that could be found on the service. It's unclear what platforms the experiment is currently taking place on, but if it launches for all users it would likely affect YouTube across mobile, desktop, TV, and more.

Using algorithms to surface content has long been popular among social media networks. Facebook's News Feed has done this for years, and Instagram followed in March 2016 stating that as it's grown its users "often don’t see the posts [they] might care about the most," although the company has made slight tweaks to the algorithms since then. For its part, Twitter as a whole still shows tweets from new to old, but it does choose to surface non-chronological content with features like "In case you missed it," displaying followers' liked tweets among your own, ads, and more.

Tag: YouTube

Top Rated Comments

matthew12 Avatar
76 months ago
YouTube, quit messing with the feed. I don't want to see people's videos out of order. If I've subscribed to them, just show me their videos. Go back to how you worked in 2010 with regards to subscribing to people and we'll be happier (and so will the creators).
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kevinp8192 Avatar
76 months ago
Why do these companies hate chronological order? I've never heard of one. single. person say they miss an important post due to being in chronological order, but I've heard of plenty being missed because of algorithms.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Gorms Avatar
76 months ago
Does anybody actually like non-chronological order? It seems to me it all it does is messes with our internal expectations of timekeeping/bookmarking and the only advantage is pushing promotional posts/similar. Which to a business makes sense, but to users... well, you won't have much business if you have no users.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Cayden Avatar
76 months ago
I absolutely hate these non-chronological order timelines. I hope they go in the direction of twitter and have an opt-out option
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EdT Avatar
76 months ago
The reason Twitter and Facebook and now Youtube are going to non sequential postings even though consumers don’t usually like it is because the people who ARE paying for these services have an economic reason for grouping like-themed material together instead of showing them chronologically.

You are the product not the customer. And since there are only a few options about services like Facebook or Twitter etc.you have no real choice. There isn’t anything you can do about your viewing/reading options beyond putting up with it or quit doing it.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bwillwall Avatar
76 months ago
What a joke. Seems to me like YouTube needs some competition.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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