YouTube lets video creators share viewing stats
Site is enabling video owners to share detailed statistics about who else is viewing their videos to the viewers themselves.
Google on Wednesday made a small change in YouTube's privacy settings that lets video creators share their viewing statistics with viewers.
Google has had Insight, its built-in, user-friendly analytics tool, since late March of last year, but up until now, only the user who had uploaded the video could see the extended information about who was viewing it. The new option gives general users the same amount of access to that information as the content owner.
The toggle, which lets viewers see the Insight information, can be turned on for all your videos at once. Users can also choose to deny the feature from appearing on specific videos by editing that particular video's privacy settings. It also appears to be an opt-out program, as it was already turned on for me on two of my accounts.
Google says that sharing viewing data with everyone can be a nice way for YouTube partners to attract potential advertisers who would not have otherwise seen metrics like gender, the sites visitors were coming from, and what parts of the video they watched. However, some uploaders may find the optional feature to be overkill.
Note: This post has been corrected since its first publishing. It originally stated that YouTube users could not turn the feature off for specific videos.
