Cosmic Panda has landed.
The long dreaded YouTube layout changes rolled out on Wednesday, despite vocal opposition from the YouTube community.
“5 words for today: ‘I hate Youtube[‘s] New Layout’” tweeted Finland resident Zescio, capturing the reactions of thousands of YouTubers opining on the new layouts over the last 24 hours.
The new layout was announced last summer. The new options are simpler, comparable to Hulu in look and color, and were designed to “make it easier to connect to the content you love,” wrote the YouTube team in an official blog post announcing the change.
Many YouTubers however, disagree. As the Daily Dot noted many times over the previous months, the community has expressed disapproval, going so far as to petition YouTube to stop the changes. The newest complaints are no different.
The most common YouTube criticisms are that the new layout options are “ugly,” “confusing” and “scary”, “awful,” “stupid” and “lame,” “disgusting,” and “terrible.” YouTubers also encouraged each other to visit the YouTube Help video explaining the new layouts and “dislike” it as a form of protest.
“Whoever thought of the new YouTube channel layout has the creative mind of an infant,” tweeted Machinima partner and video-game commentator TheLoyalPatriot. “Also it is as functional as a COD game.”
Jonathan Paula, who has been a YouTuber for at least half a decade and the creator of many popular shows, including “Is it a Good Idea To Microwave This?,” has been very outspoken about the changes in past Daily Dot articles. Paula commented today via email:
“YouTube claims the new “Cosmic Panda” / v3 channel layouts are designed to give the site a more uniform look, but really, they’re just stifling creativity. As a one of many thousands of YouTube Partners — I am saddened by this change because it limits my ability to advertise my brand effectively – which in turn, potentially hurts my revenue stream. Gone is the side-banner… and the HTML branding box — which forces all users to an un-customizable column of links… limited in length, and amount.
Every channel has a plain grey background now… gone are the transparency options that afforded the more graphically inclined amazing latitudes with their great designs and layouts. Yes, the site is uniform — but this latest change was done so at the expense of crucial branding features, and creativity.”
Not everyone is taking the YouTube changes seriously, though.
_StrawHatLuffy, for instance, tweeted people should “be happy” they can “access YouTube” at all and called the complaints over the new layouts symptomatic of first world problems.
Some YouTubers have been championing moving over to ZippCast, an alternative to YouTube that has a similar look to YouTube’s 2008 layout, as another form of protest. Videos about ZippCast as a viable alternative to YouTube have been propagating the site since September of last year.
In other words, if you don’t like what’s on YouTube, change the channel.