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By now, you’ve probably discovered that YouTube has moved the old inbox.
To find it, you have to click on the down arrow next to the “Upload” button,
choose either one of the three options — it doesn’t matter which —
and then on left click on “Community”,
and find the “Inbox” link there.
Now, I don’t get told everything, so I don’t actually know for sure,
but there is speculation that if YouTube is doing this,
it means that the feature is going to be retired soon.
That’s actually very possible
because YouTube is delegating its commenting and messaging features to the Google+ platform.
Unfortunately, Google+ doesn’t have a private messaging feature.
But Google+ does have a way of making sure
that posts and comments are visible only to certain people.
I’m now going to show you how to do that, so that if the inbox does disappear,
you’ll know what to do.
The easiest way to make certain that you end up at the correct Google+ identity
is to go to YouTube,
click on your channel icon at the top right of the page,
and then click on “Google+”.
You can now compose a message that will be posted on Google+.
But before you do, take a look at the “To” box.
This will tell you who exactly is going to be able to read your message.
If it says “Public”, then that means
that anybody who sees your Google+ page or profile
will be able to read what you’ve written.
If you don’t want to do that, if you want to keep your message private,
the first thing you must do is remove the “Public” option.
You can now add the name of the person you’re trying to message.
Or add the names of the people you’re trying to message,
because you can message more than one person at a time.
Or you can message an entire circle. Or several circles.
The important thing to remember
is to remove the “Public” option
if you want your message to be private.
You can now write and post your message,
and the recipient or recipients will normally get an instant notification
that you’ve sent them a message.
But do bear in mind that they do have the option of turning off this notification.
Replies will automatically inherit the settings of the original post,
so you can have an entire conversation in private.
Now, you don’t actually have to go to Google+ in order to be able to do this.
For example, if you comment in this way on a video,
this has the effect of sharing the video with the person you’re messaging.
You can also do the same on channel profile pages.
And that’s basically it.
You can make a post private on Google+
simply by not making it public.
And if YouTube does eventually retire the old inbox,
then that’s the technique that you’re going to have to use.