Turning comments into conversations that matter to you

Updated November 12: We know there are issues with spam and abuse in the new comments and we're working hard to fix them. We’ve already made a number of changes in the last 24 hours to reduce spammy comments and bad links, and we have more fixes coming soon.

We know how important comments are to you, and we’re making these improvements quickly so you can continue those conversations with your fans. Stay tuned for updates.

Let’s say you’re enjoying Lindsey Stirling or Epic Rap Battles’ latest video and want to join in the conversation. Would you rather see comments from people you care about (including Lindsey or ERB themselves), or just whoever in the world was last to post?

We told you recently that better commenting is coming to YouTube. Starting this week, when you’re watching a video on YouTube, you’ll see comments sorted by people you care about first. If you post videos on your channel, you also have more tools to moderate welcome and unwelcome conversations. This way, YouTube comments will become conversations that matter to you.

Here’s more detail about the new YouTube comments powered by Google+:

• Comments you care about move to the top: You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles. You can still see the most recent comments by switching from “Top Comments” to “Newest First.”

• Join the conversation publicly or privately: You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone, only people in your Circles, or just your bestie. Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations.

• Easily moderate comments: If you also post videos on your channel, you’ll have new tools to review comments before they’re posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans.

If you're like the majority of people commenting on YouTube, you’ve already connected your account to a Google+ profile or page and can start commenting now. If you haven’t connected yet, you can do it here or learn more here. Remember, you’re in control of how you're seen publicly on YouTube, whether that’s keeping your current YouTube channel name, using your own name, or creating a new one.

To learn more about connecting your YouTube channel to Google+, visit here.

Nundu Janakiram, Product Manager, and Yonatan Zunger, Principal Engineer, recently watched “Mexican Standoff (ft. Key & Peele).”