YouTube Collaborative Annotations

In case YouTube didn’t have enough ways for you to express yourself, enter collaborative annotations:

What are They ?

For those who don’t know already, annotations are the little notes, speech bubbles, links, etc. in YouTube (think VH1′s Pop Up Video):

Collaborative annotations, on the other hand, allow you to give access to others so they can add their own nuggets of wisdom to your video. All you do is send a special annotation link to whoever you would like to muddy up your content, and you’re all set.

Thankfully, the video creator retains the right to approve or delete annotations as they see fit. This is both good and bad, as I can imagine the hilarious annotation spam that we’re missing out on:

For more of the tactical details on collaborative annotations hit up the YouTube Official Blog post on it.

Should I Care About This?

In short, No.

Some video projects may benefit from these features but that is completely debatable. A few students from the Nissan acting studio put collaborative annotations to use on their “sitcom” Kevin N’ George Must Die :

The idea is interesting, but for some the novelty wears off quickly:

Unless you have a unique use for this technology you may be adding features but not benefits. Speaking of…

Are There any SEO Benefits to using Annotations ?

Does YouTube analyze the text of annotations to help determine keyword relevance ? Your guess is as good as mine. In my opinion, you’d be better off focusing on the video SEO basics and making sure your video is highly rated and well commented before you go forcing keywords into annotations.

The only immediate benefit I can see is that when you hover over a collaborative annotation you can see the user name of the person who left it:

Clicking the username takes you to that user’s YouTube channel page, so if you leave helpful/funny/insightful annotations on other videos you may be able to increase the number of people who visit your profile (which could potentially increase your video views).

I can also see how being added as a collaborator might be a trust signal for YouTube. It means someone trusted you to add content to their video. Then any annotations that remain live all point back to your YouTube channel thus increasing your “channel rank” in the eyes of the almighty algorithm.

What Do You Think ?

Can you see any interesting uses or implications of this new feature ? Share your thoughts in the comments below.