After offering annotations as a way for video creators to add clickable text overlays to their videos for a couple of years, YouTube has decided to replace it with a new product it calls Cards.
Cards will eventually replace annotations product with a new interface, which is designed to work across screens, mobile inclusive.
YouTube describes Card as “an evolution of annotations,” which will continue to serve same purpose as its other service. However, the Google-owned company said that the new annotations have more card-style user interface. The rectangular-shaped cards according to TechCrunch, appear to the right of the video, and can be accessed with a single click.
“As a creator, you’ve probably been using annotations to engage with your viewers for years. But one of the things you’ve told us is that you need more flexibility with the info you share through annotations, and—most importantly—you need it to work across screens and especially on mobile. That’s why today we’re introducing cards.
“You can think of cards like an evolution of annotations. They can inform your viewers about other videos, merch, playlists, websites and more. They look as beautiful as your videos, are available anytime during the video and yes, they finally work on mobile,” YouTube explained in a post on Monday.
Cards will appear to viewers as a small teaser for a couple of seconds, allowing viewers to click and access the card directly. In addition, at any point in time in the video, a small icon will appear as soon as they hover over the video playing on the desktop or when the player controls are displaying on mobile. To scroll through all the cards available on that video, viewers can click on the icon. The choice of whether to ignore the teaser, which shows up is also available to the viewers, and it will go away, and allow you to watch the video continuously.
Currently you allowed to choose from six different types cards including: “Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding. You’ll find a new “Cards” tab in your Video Editor to create and edit them at any time.”
What happens to the current annotations system?
YouTube plans to replace annotations with cards, but that won’t happen immediately; at least this won’t happen until YouTube’s new tool is able to do virtually everything that annotations can at the very least. What the company wants you to do is to send in feedbacks including the type of features you would love to see added to the new product in the future.
