YouTube Undergoing Massive Changes?
Pete Cashmore seems to believe that the current changes YouTube is undergoing tonight will be much more than just the maintanence they claim. The potential changes would include a new way to organize videos and facilitate user stickiness where they stay around longer after finding more and more relevant content. Personally, I don’t think this is necessary as I end up wasting 2 hours on YouTube everytime someone sends me a link to a video.
The new interface will allow users to organize clips according to designated categories. So, for example, music clips can be organized around artists or vacations can be organized around specific activities. For broadcasters and other mainstream media, there will be the utility to make their presence more organized, putting specific shows in order.
Regardless, we’ll see if these claims turn out to be true in the morning. I think it’s safe to say that these potential changes will be made under the guidance of Google.. who is trying to recoup the cost of countless copyright lawsuits *cough* Viacom *cough* by enhancing YouTube so viewers hang around longer and see more ads.
Speaking of addictive video, be sure to check out this powerful video on the issue of network neutrality. My Communication & Culture professor presented this to class yesterday as a companion to his lecture on network neutrality and Web 2.0.
YouTube’s search facility is the thing that needs to be worked on most because it is probably YouTube’s worst feature and with Google taking over you would have thought it would have been the first thing to change, but hey!
http://www.youtube.com/testtube ?
@Simon: Good point - what keeps me from staying around longer is a search engine that returns widely irrelevant items.
@Arjun: Nice find. “Join Streams” seems like a very Googlesque innovation, which probably has a lot of potential. I wonder what else they have in store.
Interesting video Paul, thanks for the link. Unfortunately it seems that not enough people know about or understand the issue of net neutrality in the UK, and I only really started to understand exactly what’s at stake a while back through listening to Cory Doctorow talk about his work with the EFF on TWIT.
Hopefully if everyone educates themselves on the matter we can fight to ensure we never have a tiered Internet and loose the freedom to communicate and express ourselves freely.