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Personally, I would be happy to see G+ get a little more traction among my less-techy friends and family which isn't going to happen without Google doing stuff like this.
While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes or wrong -- it just smacks of the same old 'Everything that's new sucks' sentiment that I can and do find on IRC every day already. Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
what you said is literally false. here's his in-depth critique:
"I’m going to lose a crapton of potential upvotes for Tabletop, because the core of my audience is tech-savvy and may not want to “upgrade” to yet another fucking social network they don’t want or need...
Those upvotes are incredibly important to us, because we need them to earn another season of our show...
[this] will negatively affect how users can interact with us on YouTube."
translation: "we might lose the ability to do our show, because this G+ +1 button introduces friction and a sign-up process we don't expect our users will bother to complete."
It's perfectly reasonable that Google would try to consolidate their properties. You used to need a YouTube account to do anything, and they own YouTube and don't feel like managing disparate databases about their users. It may be a minor inconvenience because it's a change from what people are used to, but it makes sense logistically and serves their business interests. They ARE a business after all...
As a user and a video creator this would annoy me a lot. If they want to add a G+ button fine, but replacing a core feature? Unacceptable.
While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes or wrong -- it just smacks of the same old 'Everything that's new sucks' sentiment that I can and do find on IRC every day already. Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
Look at where that G+ button is. It's big, its first, and it combines, as-one, an already existing feature -- the "Like" button.
The G+ button isn't optionial, placed in a "secondary" position (i.e. to the right), or a single feature/choice.
That's probably why users are getting upset with this, UX background or not.
While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes or wrong -- it just smacks of the same old 'Everything that's new sucks' sentiment that I can and do find on IRC every day already. Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
I don't think it's meant to be an in depth critique, it's his feedback as a user. He doesn't need to be a design expert or UX expert to know that as a user something is annoying. The real UX folks should be listening to users, they don't have to agree or implement everything said, but they should be listening. The point seems to be don't rob people of functionality they've come to expect just to push sign-ups.
It sounds like it's more his feedback as a creator, worried about what the functionality will do to users. But, you know, those are the breaks when you sharecrop on someone else's land: they retain the right to change things for their own benefit.
Still don't quite understand the complaint, though. You've long needed a Google account to give feedback on YouTube. Now they call those accounts G+ accounts (just as Hotmail accounts became Live accounts, etc). What's the problem?
sidenote -- gah, accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to select text. Apologies.
While I appreciate the sentiment and agree with his point of view, his simply telling Google 'go fuck yourself' doesn't really offer an in-depth critique of why these changes or wrong -- it just smacks of the same old 'Everything that's new sucks' sentiment that I can and do find on IRC every day already. Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
The main reason he gives is that it increases the barrier to entry for liking a video, which is important for many content creators. (like him) This seems concrete and significant. I don't agree however with his assessment of this changing the funding equation for people getting production funded. As long as the change applies globally, everyone should feel the hit equally and it they should be able to correct for it…
Guess which market Wheaton is going after?
It's perfectly reasonable that Google would try to consolidate their properties. You used to need a YouTube account to do anything, and they own YouTube and don't feel like managing disparate databases about their users. It may be a minor inconvenience because it's a change from what people are used to, but it makes sense logistically and serves their business interests. They ARE a business after all...
YouTube is not Google. Google is not YouTube. They just happen to own it. Google should start remembering that before YouTube gets myspaced. Which imo is looking increasingly likely. Vimeo is one competitor which seems to already be growing like crazy for example.
The web is built on URLs. If you like something and want to share it with people, send them a URL. That's what they're for.