John Malecki

@MarioJoos How are you strategizing for creators who get primary viewership from returning and casual viewers, specifically long form.

Let's do an "Ask Me Anything". I'm a Retention Director who worked with some of the biggest YouTube creators. Ask me anything about YouTube strategy for the next 24 hours. I'll answer as many questions as possible!

@TTVdookiepox @DudespostingWs We don’t work on cars…

There's absolutely no reason to wear uncomfortable foot destroying fungus promoting non aerated expensive boots when you're working on freaking cars. I have never worn boots like that ever in my life and I've only ever dropped one thing on my foot and hurt it in my life. This is just stupid.

@MarioJoos Amazing. Thank you!

@John_Malecki Made a post about this last year

🚨Important thread: The YouTube algorithm actually changed, for the worse. (+Data) I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I should or shouldn’t address this publicly. I’ve already talked to some people within YouTube, but I don’t believe the word of a single person, meaning me, will be enough to encourage change. At least not quick change. Before I begin, a direct note to all my friends at YouTube, I truly respect what you’ve been doing in the past year, and I know you’ll take this problem seriously, but I’m also aware that you’ll often have your hands tied and there isn’t much you can personally do. I won’t reveal any sensitive information that people can’t find out by themselves. Let’s begin. A few months ago, creators of all sizes started noticing a significant change in the overall performance of their channels. Usually this is related to the overall behavior of audiences, however, this one felt different. It wasn’t just one or two channels, it was every single channel I was working on (and more). These are channels that pull 100 million to 1 billion views per month at times. At first, I was like: alright, let’s find out where we’re going wrong. Maybe we’re missing something. However, after weeks and months, no answers were found. This is very frustrating, not only for myself but also for the creators who are relying on these answers to maintain their channel, business and livelihood. But that’s when we made a breakthrough, a way of looking at data that we had missed. You see, this entire time we were analyzing the channel as a whole, new and old videos combined. However, we weren’t focused on isolating older content, specifically content with a publish date older than one month. That’s where, for the first time, we noticed something unusual. We saw a complete crash in short form views on content older than one month. (see image) What we found was that somewhere in the middle of September, YouTube had pushed a significant change in their short form algorithm which impacted nearly every short form creator across the platform. Why is this a problem? Because it affects every creator we all care about. It didn’t matter if you were a smaller creator or one of the top ten creators, we haven’t found many people who were spared. I’ll leave a brief explanation at the bottom so you can check your own channel. And these weren’t just entertainment or educational creators, it was both. What we found is that YouTube seems to have implemented a change that strongly prioritizes content uploaded in the last month, roughly 28 to 30 days, we’re still unsure. But what impact does this have, and why do I believe this is something that should be brought to light? The first impact is that we’re seeing a shift away from quality to quantity. Often, creators live off the revenue generated, not just Adsense, from these bigger content pieces. A strong portion of this revenue comes from their back catalog, meaning older content. With this change, you’re increasing the importance of high volume uploads in the first 30 days. What do I believe is happening, and why is this change going through? I believe there are two reasons why YouTube is pushing this change. First, to hit certain targets with Shorts. Plain simple, I don’t believe this is a “what’s best for the creator” type of play, it feels more like a “we want to compete with TikTok” type of play. Not unreasonable, even if the creator gets hurt by it short term. I’m just trying to think from a corporate point of view. The second reason, which I believe to be the actual leading reason, is a push for recency, freshness or novelty, whichever term they would choose to use. But if this is the reason, there’s a massive overcorrection happening. Some content needs that freshness: news, streaming highlights, medical information. However, this isn’t true for all types of content. Some content from years ago is just as good today. We have noticed that certain top content pieces, individual videos, still get a significant amount of views, so it looks more like prioritization than anything else. Regardless, while in private I find it fun to refer to this situation as “the flattening”, in reality this is a very concerning moment where simple ideas turn into a massive hit toward the creator economy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of changes that have been affecting people. It’s important that changes on the platform aren’t just focused on the consumer, but the preservation of a healthy creator economy that allows creators to grow their business, teams, and create better content. Without a focus on both the creator and the consumer, you’ll quickly run into an issue of low quality slop that makes people want to go elsewhere. If there’s any call to action here for you, whether you’re a creator or a viewer, I strongly encourage you to leave your thoughts here to encourage YouTube to rethink this decision, or at least optimize it so that it’s also regarding the importance of keeping a healthy creator economy. Share your thoughts, and even data from your own channel, because this will be seen by people who have the power to make change. Disclaimer: I’ve left out some sensitive information. However, if you want to check this for yourself, go to Analytics, click on Advanced Mode, filter by Content Type (Shorts), filter by Publish Date (for example any short published from Jan 2025 to Jun 2025), set the data to Last 365 Days and take a look at the change happening around September. I think you can imagine why it took so long for us to find out where the issue began. Thanks for reading this post.

@MarioJoos This is a great insight and something that we’ve been noticed dramatically with our channels and some of the other channels we can consult on I see a shift like this, forcing long form first creators to have to adapt their entire business models, which is very concerning

🚨Important thread: YouTube’s Home Feed UI Changes Negatively Impact Long-form Viewers (+Data) This year has been a tough year for many content creators, especially those making long-form content. And unlike many other years, the reason wasn’t that obvious. However, we finally found some data and started understanding what’s been happening. In this post, I want to highlight a problem that affects long-form creators. Important pre-note: since the last algorithm post, I’ve talked to the YouTube team. They’ve been open to conversation. That said, I believe in the importance of public awareness around these changes. Now, let’s talk about the important stuff. The UI Changes While we aren’t 100% certain about the full roll-out date of this update, and we believe it has been happening gradually, we do know that long-form creators are affected by changes to the browse feed. In the past, when you’d open your home page, you would see upwards of 6 long-form recommendations per row, often across two rows. (see first image) However, this has changed. In many cases, now only 2 long-form recommendations are shown, with the second row already taking up slots for short-form recommendations (see second image). Because of this, the ratio of long-form versus short-form often skews toward 2 long-form to 5 short-form recommendations on PC. This means that we're seeing a choice reduction of up to 80% long-form recommendation compared to previous home feeds. Note that you may see 3 videos being recommended, however, the first one being a sponsored post, I wouldn’t consider this as an organic long-form recommendation. Now, there are variations between non-premium and premium accounts, differences between device type and between accounts that predominantly watch long-form versus short-form content. But the overall change still affects a large portion of users. It’s very clear that this skews viewers’ attention toward short-form content. So what about the data? Finding data on this was incredibly hard. We don’t have access to the same kind of information as YouTube themselves, so take the following with a grain of salt. That said, we did manage to pull information from over 1,000 channels (thanks to some close friends of mine who don’t want to be named). What we found is that traffic for Shorts went up aggressively through browse features (see third image). At first glance, this sounds great. People are gaining rather than losing views, right? But those views, and that time spent, have to come from somewhere. While YouTube isn’t a zero-sum game, we do believe this signal indicates that the browse UI changes are having an impact somewhere else. We believe that these UI changes are slowly affecting long-form performance for creators, even if the drops aren’t very noticeable over a shorter period of time. The example I’ve added was the most extreme example of a person seeing a noticeable change in Shorts views coming from Browse without making significant changes to their content. So what can you do? Honestly, for you, as a creator, the only feasible option is to understand where the platform is at and create content accordingly. Follow what you’re incentivized to create. That said, I do believe that letting YouTube know about your concerns is important. Writing about it matters. I’m not very happy with these changes because I believe they are disproportionately favoring short-form content over long-form content, and this is dangerous for an ecosystem that heavily relies on long-form content for creator sustainability. And this is why I’m writing about this. Because creator sustainability often relies on resources created by content (income) and Short often does not generate enough resources to continue to create high-quality content. That’s why a lot of Shorts creators try to get into long-form. They are seeking that pathway to sustainability and resources to create better content. However, updates like these close that option for many, overall impacting the health of the creator economy. If you share my overall concern, then here’s my recommendation. YouTube has been reading these posts and seem to care about the opinions of creators. It’s important that we don’t turn this into a subjective “drama circle,” especially now that they’re actively showing interest in our concerns. However, it’s also important that we let ourselves be heard. My only ask is this: don’t be silent if this concerns you. My goal is to help feed you with information and potentially even the wording and reasoning to defend your concerns. One action I could ask you for is to respond to this post with your own concerns so it reaches more people and raises awareness. Responses can be about why you think this is good or bad for creators, how this change has affected you, or even a simple response, like, or share that helps it travel further. Hope you “enjoyed” this read.

@antxoch Fire

🖌️ thumbnail for @John_Malecki

Not everyday you crank up an old madden game and see one of your favorite YouTubers 🤣🤣@John_Malecki

@DylanKo02458564 This is amazing!

@JasonPinkstonOL It got sprinkly for sure

Instant classic! The sprinkler system came on if I’m not mistaking!

🎨 The new Shop Shades scheme that will be racing at Pocono this weekend! It was great working with the John Malecki team on this and it should look great on track!

@ZlocksCa What other context is there besides life?

@John_Malecki Depending on context but if you are referring to life in general I agree.

Winning is not a ‘sometimes’ thing….

Looks don’t bother my my man! Thank you!

Who is using YouTube for their business ?!

With a plan, anything is possible. Early on, I would jump right in to anything I was doing. I never really took the time to sit down and hash it out. Being in business for 12 years & growing a social following of over 3M+. I can say, it’s way easier to win when you plan.

@PantherLair @WPIAL_Insider @scorindorin I will say he said 15 years…. And we’re old now. Soooo technically we didn’t get snubbed @scorinscoring

@WPIAL_Insider Yeah adding defense made it trickier. And I couldn’t find highlights of @scorindorin - he would probably win. You know who kicked the most ass in his film? @John_Malecki

@WPIAL_Insider youtube.com/watch?v=ikZAmD…

Former player @john_malecki is this week's #FormerPlayerHighlight. The former O-lineman discovered his passion for woodworking while he was still in the NFL and he now continues to do what he loves with his 1.2 million Youtube subscribers. These subscribers tune in to John's woodworking channel to watch him build everything from cutting boards and end tables to a hidden whiskey cabinet and a door inspired by “The Lord of the Rings.”

@LemacksMedia The nostalgia of the radio is what gets me. Even makes you forget that you can repeat this song with no effort forever. 😂

I still get pumped up when I hear a song come on my Spotify list like I’m a little kid listening to the radio waiting for a song.

@scorindorin I second that

Scott McKillop.