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.
My understanding of his complaint is that he was signed in to youtube, which is why it's billed as an 'upgrade.' He should be able to easily use YouTube with a YouTube account. I think that's where the complaint comes in, it's not just calling the account something different, it's making things more difficult for those who might want to keep some things separate.
That doesn't make your points any less true, but I at least think I understand the complaint.
edit: also no worries on the downvote ;)
[1]http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
Well it's good that in addition to "go fuck yourself", he offered an in-depth critique of why these changes are wrong. I guess maybe you stopped reading before that?
> Leave the analyses to the real UX folks.
Whoa now, hold on just a goddamned minute. What "real UX folks" say only holds weight insofar as it accurately pertains to the interaction and communication of producers and consumers. When content producers say "This change breaks an important connection to our users", then "UX folks" had better listen good and hard.
Guess which market Wheaton is going after?
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.
Uh, no, it doesn't, at least not at any responsible software project I've worked on. The whole reason you run experiments, A/B testing, etc is so that this doesn't happen.
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."
Yeah, but he misses the next step in logical thinking which is that the changes will apply to everyone. This new button is for everyone, which means everyone will get less votes which means less are needed for him to continue to run the show.
It's not a linear adjustment for everyone.
That's not the point the author is arguing anyway.
no he doesn't, not at all. he "misses" this step because while it might be logical over the long term for the world on average, it's irrelevant to his business.
if you've got a deal in place, based on existing expectations of the number of upvotes, and Google changes how upvotes happen, your existing deal is threatened. it's like if you agree to work for an hourly rate right before your government devalues their currency.
I believe what's happening here is he has a certain number of upvotes which he needs to obtain if his show is going to continue. for instance he might have a deal with investors, or he might just want to compete with pre-existing vidoes whose upvotes (achieved under the previous system) are already secure. Google made it harder for him to get upvotes, thus disrupting his business.
it's cool to disrupt businesses but if you set yourself up as a platform and then you disrupt businesses built on your platform, that's less cool. that's an unstable platform and a dangerous place to do business.
If he does share it, that just gives your video and even greater probability of going viral. Why cant content publishers get this?