Platform Comparison: YouTube and Twitter
The following are comparisons of the discourse encouraged and enabled by YouTube and Twitter, respectively, based on their differences in structure and function. Refer back to the Platform Comparison Chart to see a basic outline of these differences in structure and function.
Primary Content
YouTube uses videos as posts while Twitter primarily focuses on text, though tweets can include other types of media, including video, though Twitter has less robust video options than YouTube. With or without additional media, Tweets cannot exist without text, operating around the 140-character limit. The placement of the text above any image, video, etc. creates a focus on the text. Further, the knowledge of some blip of text between 1 and 140 characters being required creates a sense that the text is the tweet; any non-text content is supplementary. On the contrary, YouTube’s primary content is video. Text descriptions of videos, though required, are placed below the video. These text descriptions are made supplementary, like non-text content on Twitter; YouTube video descriptions are, however, placed in a more hidden place, making them far easier to ignore along with some part of what the video creator is saying.
Content Rating System
Where YouTube allows users to like or dislike content, Twitter only allows users to like content, or else refrain from entering that at-a-glance response. Twitter, as a result, does not provide that particular pathway for negativity that YouTube does provide. Additionally, whereas liking on Twitter is not completely anonymous, sending a notification to the original poster, liking and disliking on YouTube are anonymous, giving those who dislike videos that protection from identification.
Sharing Options
YouTube provides sharing options for sharing outside of the YouTube while Twitter’s sharing options operate within Twitter. Twitter is included among the platforms to which YouTube allows viewers to share videos. The Twitter and YouTube communities overlap significantly in terms of YouTube personalities--due more, however, to the structure of the platform than the technical sharing system itself.
Comments and Replies
Twitter completely lacks the type of comments sections available on YouTube. Twitter instead allows users to respond to content only by creating new content in the form of another tweet. Using this system in place of a comments section equalizes the position of those initially tweeting and responding to tweets. This system has a corollary in YouTube’s video response system, which no longer insists. In its current form, the format of YouTube maximises the difference between creating content and commenting on it. Videos on YouTube do, in practice, respond to other videos on occasion, but the system no longer directly facilitates this type of discourse.
Reporting of Posts
This option looks similar on both YouTube and Twitter, existing under similar drop-down menus. While YouTube lists “report” at the top of the drop-down menu, however, Twitter places this option further down along with the milder alternative “mute” and “block” options. Abuse of the reporting option on posts is slightly easier on YouTube than on Twitter. Worth noting, however, is the difference in meaning behind reporting a YouTube video and reporting a tweet. The average piece of content on YouTube takes much greater time and effort to produce than the average piece of content on Twitter. Any abuse of the report option, therefore, has a greater impact on YouTube in addition to being slightly easier to do.
Following System
Subscribing to channels on YouTube and following others on Twitter are both one-way relationships. In practice, however, YouTube users more greatly discourage “sub-for-sub” activity than Twitter users do the equivalent of following others back. This disparity likely results from Twitter more consistently creating an equal playing field than YouTube does.
Private Messaging System
Twitter offers a more chat-like private messaging system whereas YouTube offers a more email-like system. Twitter provides a slightly faster path to accessing its messaging system, but does not especially emphasize it. Despite being a chat format, however, Twitter’s messaging system does not provide auditory or pop-up notifications of new messages, making it closer to as efficient as YouTube’s messaging system. As a result, conflicts on both YouTube and Twitter are known for playing out as something of a public spectacle.
Privacy Settings
YouTube provides more options than Twitter in terms of privacy settings, the former providing privacy options for the videos users post while the latter provides privacy settings only for whole accounts. Both function as largely public spheres of discourse. In regards to redacting what one has previously posted however, while Twitter only allows users to delete past tweets, YouTube also allows the option to set videos to unlisted or private, thus interrupting or eliminating traffic towards a video without completely removing it from the site.