YouTube should Rethink its Mobile Notifications

Broken Notifications on mobile is a big issue

YouTube has an interesting Notification system.

The problem is on mobile it’s not very intuitive. Firstly, YouTube’s iOS app opens to the messages section by default.

Messages contain

This is an example of putting power users ahead of your general user.

The ratio of YouTube users that have enough messages in their inbox or shared videos from YouTube directly to a Google account, is slim to none.

I have one YouTube video I shared to someone almost two years ago.

To me, this page is redundant. Unless the “You may know” section is a gateway to a proper Youtube social network.

Google did just kill Google+.

YouTube should switch to automatically opening the Notifications tab by default. Moreover, naming the tab where users find alerts for new videos “Inbox” is likely a misstep.

Checking your Inbox feels like a chore. This should be renamed to “Alerts” or “New”. Especially if YouTube wants to increase consumption. Maybe even adding a small notification counter would make sense.