Seriously, now you have to go through all these steps just to read your PMs there:
Home Page
Click on Video Manager
Click on Community
Then click on Inbox
What was wrong with the old layout? Absolutely nothing!
It's annoying, because I was talking to a few people there, and they already tend to forget the damn thing exists, and that's WITH a link in the header on each page. How the hell are they supposed to know they've got new messages now?
YouTube has been like that for like 6 or 7 months. I found it randomly 5 months ago while looking through my uploads. Now I just make sure to look everyday. It's like a routine.
It expects you to have linked with Google+. The new inbox is unlocked when you link your account, and it's much easier to find. It's right by your username in the top right.
The only thing good that came from this is when you go to community, you can see a list of comments that people has posted on your videos there. This way, you can see if there has been any new comments on your videos, without having your channel to be linked to Google+. I didn't know you can see the new comments there, because I never click on community.
I really wish Youtube had a good competitor, but it well never happen. I haven't really seen a change I liked since they started allowing HD videos.
Their making a site called Bitvid, which is suppose to resemble the old Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmw0K-jur5o
I don't know if it will be successful but I hope it does.
Up until it's closure, Weeno.net did a pretty good job at simulating the old YouTube experience. It looked exactly like it's layout from 2009 just before the terrible redesign of 2010 that pretty much slowly began destroying YouTube.
