YouTube, after the break of 2019, says goodbye to a tradition that lasted for a decade: it changes register, news already this year
Stop to a long tradition, very long, ten years. This is the decision of YouTube, one of the very first video streaming platforms, founded in 2005 and since the following year owned by Google, which, realizing its potential, took it over from its three founders with an expenditure that exceeded one and a half billion dollars.
Addio to YouTube Rewind, the videos published at the end of the year that from 2010 to 2019 summarized the trends that emerged on the platform or brought to mind the episodes that have depopulated more than others. Of course, these were high-profile videos that included the best creators on YouTube. Back in late 2020, Google had given up on making Rewind, trivially because there was nothing to celebrate as much as a painful year for humanity that was best left quickly behind. This year there will be no Rewind, next year there will be no Rewind, and so on, but the idea of the recap video is not permanently shelved.
Total change of approach
Google, in fact, along with the decision to say goodbye to Rewind has also announced that the recap videos will continue to exist but will be approached in a different, unprecedented way: "Thank you to all the creators who have been involved in Rewind. [...] We're now going to focus our energy on celebrating [creators] and the trends that make YouTube an interesting place, but offering a different experience. Stay tuned!" YouTube wrote on Twitter, commenting on a news that announced the stop of Rewind.
Google therefore preferred to remain vague on what will be new about the annual summaries, but the good news for curious and Rewind fans is that after all we're close to the end of the year so the news will come out relatively soon. Google has remained equally tight-lipped about the reasons that led it to such a radical choice, only denying that it was due to the criticism it received in the past.
YouTube's Rewind's stormy past
In 2018 in particular, YouTube's Rewind had gone down in history as the most disliked video on the entire platform: 19 million likes and just 3 million dislikes had put Google in an awkward situation, requiring it to rectify the situation for the following year, when things improved but not dramatically (3.4 million likes, 9.5 million dislikes). In 2020 the stop due to the pandemic probably saved Google from yet another embarrassing situation and now the final farewell to the custom, in fact, to change style.
The reason for so many dislikes to the last Rewind seems to have been due to the change in style of the summary videos that Google had imprinted in recent times: if in the early years they could be seen as a kind of celebration of the YouTube community, in recent times the videos seemed more like an opportunity that Google exploited to show advertisers what content they could place their ads on. In short, the accusation was that videos were no longer for the community but for advertisers. The absence of some famous youtubers also didn't help the latest Rewind.