YouTube Adds Google Plus Type Comments

youtube comments

If you’ve noticed the comments in your YouTube account are looking more like Google Plus these days, it’s not your imagination. YouTube recently announced roll out of a new comment section powered by Google Plus.

In a post on the official YouTube Blog, product manager Nundu Janakiram and principal engineer Yonatan Zunger explained:

We told you recently that better commenting is coming to YouTube. Starting this week, when you’re watching a video on YouTube, you’ll see comments sorted by people you care about first.

Here’s a brief video highlighting the basics of the new comment section:

The new roll out stops short of being a full integration of the Google Plus comment section. However, comments from your Google Plus circles are given priority. So are comments from what YouTube calls “popular personalities” and the video’s creator.

Of course, if you’d really rather see comments in the order they were added, you can do that simply by choosing the “newest first” option instead of the default “top comments” at the top of the comment section.

Another feature similar to Google Plus lets you choose whether to share the comments you make in a video publicly or only with certain circles of your connections in the Google Plus social network.

You can even share comments in your Google stream if you wish by choosing that option under the comment box.

The new comment section also gives you more control over comments on your channel. You can either hold comments for approval or auto-approve comments from long-time trusted fans.

You Tube says it will even allow you to block certain words from being posted in the comment section on your channel, a potentially helpful tool for moderating comments.

The new commenting section should make YouTube ultimately more socially. But only time will tell whether users and channel administrators want to spend time monitoring and maintaining yet another social media channel.