A social network that was once heavily criticized by everyone back in late 2013 due to the
YouTube-G+ integration. But now looking back, the
change wasn't really that
bad for me. I came to
like using the G+ app to manage my YouTube comment inbox.
In fact, from a sole usability standpoint, the G+ era of YT made it far more easier to manage and respond to replies than
YouTube's current notification system. Not only that, but G+ allowed you to mute individual YT comment threads, which is something you can't do anymore; it's either mute all comment thread notifs or nothing. But perhaps one of the biggest perks of the YT-G+ integration was the ability to DISABLE replies on your YT comment and also DELETE replies. Yes that's right, as the
OP of a comment thread you actually had the power to delete replies. While this could be abused, usually it wasn't and was very useful for ridding hateful, off-topic or spam replies.
But then in late-
2017, following YT's redesign, you could no longer use G+ to manage youtube comment threads and thus all those perks were gone. A new notif system was implemented and it sucked so
bad. Initially you couldn't even reply to someone within the notification
pop-out (you can now tho).
And finally in April
2019, Google+ itself shut down. While I barely used the app for what it was, I do miss those times when I received YT notifs through G+, particularly during 2014/2015.
As the saying goes: you don't recognize what was
precious to you until it is gone.
