Google has announced that it is putting away the Annotations Editor tool for YouTube for good. The company said that people will no longer be able to add new annotations or edit the old ones using the tool come May 2nd. Creators can still use other tools for annotating their videos however, the Annotations editor won’t be one of them.
The tool was introduced almost a decade ago in 2008. However, Google feels that it is unable to keep pace with the up and coming technologies and as such, has decided to put it away.
Announcing the news through a blog post, Google said:
Effective starting May 2, you’ll no longer be able to add new or edit existing annotations, only delete them. Existing annotations will continue to show when using a desktop computer. We wanted to give you advanced notice so you can adjust.
The company believes that the time was ripe to bid the feature adieu — particularly in face of end Screens and cards. The company argues that with the vast majority of the populace watching videos on mobile, creating annotations that won’t even reach most of the audience was kind of pointless.
YouTube also said that end Screens and Cards are more engaging for your viewers: End Screens and Cards generate seven times more clicks across YouTube than annotations. In fact, viewers generally don’t love annotations, and on average they close 12 annotations before they click on one of them. And more and more viewers turn off annotations altogether.
You told us that adding annotations at the end of your videos is hard. With End Screens that process is now much quicker and easier — in fact, up to ten times quicker. You can now import End Screens from other videos or use dynamic overlays to save yourself even more time.
Keeping all these factors in mind, Google opted for shutting the feature down once and for all.
