14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube has never been just about the videos but about the community around them as well. With hundreds of millions of users, though, the community can get pretty crowded and less than useful. YouTube is now introducing a new tool that should help even video creators with millions of followers to interact with them. With Google Moderator, any YouTube user can ask the opinion of its viewers and not get overwhelmed by (poor-quality) answers.
“YouTube is about starting a conversation... But until now, it’s been difficult to harness those free-flowing discussions. That’s why, starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel,” YouTube announced on its blog.
“Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time. We previously used Google Moderator as part of our interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” the announcement added.
Google Moderator has actually been around for a couple of years. The tool makes it easy to crowdsource group suggestions. It enables users to enter questions or suggestions, or vote on the ones they think are the most useful. Google has been using the tool for itself, for example when asking for suggestions on how to improve YouTube, and also makes it available to anyone at google.com/moderator.
Now, the tool is available to any YouTube user. Once set up, anyone can make suggestions or answer a question from a video. This being YouTube, one can also make video replies and enter them. Viewers will then vote on the best ones. They can remove the entries that they find inappropriate and even embed the whole thing on other sites. To help popularize the feature, Google has partnered with 12 YouTube users, from institutions like the New York Times and Stanford to YouTube sensations like everyone’s favorite HotforWords (in the video below).