YouTube Blog-Australia

Promote your video on YouTube and across the Web

2009-10-28T09:44:00.007+11:00

In early October, we reached an important milestone for YouTube: over one billion views per day on YouTube from people around the world. That's a lot people watching a lot of videos, and it's matched by an equally staggering amount of video uploaded to YouTube: about 20 hours every minute. With so many people and videos on YouTube, it's not easy for your video to get discovered and to find the right audience. We know that sometimes you need a little help to make your video the next YouTube sensation (after all, not everyone has the voice of Susan Boyle).

That's why today we're excited to launch Promoted Videos in Australia. Promoted Videos are an easy way for you - whether you're an aspiring musician or small business owner - to get your video in front of the right audience and find your fan or customer base. With Promoted Videos, you can place your video next to relevant content on YouTube search results and watch pages as well as pages within Google's network of publisher sites. Like Google AdWords, Promoted Videos are targeted by keyword and priced on a cost-per-click basis.

We also wanted to make it as easy as possible to buy Promoted Videos, which is why we've integrated this feature into Google AdWords. You can place bids, select where you'd like your videos to appear, and set daily spending budgets all within the AdWords interface. Our aim is to provide a single destination for your overall Google ad buy, as well as give YouTube advertisers new to AdWords access to additional campaign tools.

To start promoting your video today, visit adwords.google.com.au or sign up for a webinar. Your fans are out there. Promoted Videos will help you find them.

Posted by Jay Akkad and Matthew Liu, YouTube Product Managers

U2 on YouTube -- Live!

2009-10-20T07:58:00.003+11:00

If you're a fan of the Irish rock band U2, you may have already caught wind of a little secret. Yesterday, guitarist The Edge alerted fans that you will be able to watch their upcoming performance at the Rose Bowl in L.A. on their YouTube channel.

Australian and New Zealand YouTubers can join U2 live at the following times on Monday, October 26, 2009, 2:30pm EDT*.

In addition to pumping your fist along with Bono, you'll be able to join YouTube's global listening party via a Twitter gadget embedded on U2's YouTube channel. And if you miss the concert, just press play when you wake up or get to a computer: the uploaded rebroadcast of the full show will be available the next day.

Michele Flannery, Music Manager, recently watched U2360 "The Cow Man"

*Timezone gymnastics for Monday October 26:
Perth 11:30am
Darwin 1:00pm
Brisbane 1:30pm
Adelaide 2:00pm
Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra/Hobart 2:30pm
Auckland 4:30pm

Star in a Lost Valentinos Music Video

2009-10-16T15:28:00.002+11:00

Ever wanted to star in a music clip for your favourite band? Here's your chance, thanks to Sydney band Lost Valentinos and a new type of technology that allows fans to customise a music video for the band's new single, "Nightmoves."

The Lost Valentinos have created an augmented reality music video, which lets you merge your world with computer-generated imagery of the band. Here's how it works: you print a page of five markers, each of which represent one member of the band playing their new single. Then you include this print-out in your video recording, and the augmented reality technology super-imposes images of the band into your own video. You get to direct -- set the scene, line up the band members -- and then share your customised video with friends on YouTube.

Give it a try: sit in the director's chair and maker your own music video on the band's dedicated YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/nightmovesAR

Posted by Christine Knight, YouTube Australia Community

"The Key to Curation Is Curiosity" Meet Our Curators of the Month

2009-10-15T11:39:00.002+11:00

We're thrilled to have the folks behind the Wooster Collective, one of the Web's most-trafficked sites devoted to urban and street art, curating our homepage today. For anyone interested in cool art videos, their YouTube channel is a must-subscribe; from their vast network of artists, they're often the first to know about videos like notblu's MUTO, which has gone on to garner more than 5 million views.

The Wooster Collective are a model of an important -- but often under-the-radar -- group on YouTube: curators, those people who have a knack for finding great videos, organizing and archiving them on their YouTube channel, and perhaps also distributing them off of YouTube via a blog or social media. In this case, the curators post daily to the Wooster blog, while on their YouTube channel they cluster finds into playlists with themes like The Classics, Outdoors, Timelapse, Geek Graffiti, and Guerrilla Knitting. Learn who they are, how they find such gold on the site, and a bit about their philosophy on all this:

How do you find such great videos?
A few different ways. First, amazingly talented artists and videographers from all over the world share links with us of new videos they upload to YouTube. We receive a hundreds of emails about new work every day. But, in addition to this, we use the terrific tools that YouTube offers to keep up with what's new on the site. We subscribe to many artist and videographers' channels. We also check out the videos that are recommended by YouTube. Every day we discover new things.

For us, the key to curation is curiosity. The best curators in the world, both online and off, are curious people by nature. We love seeing new things, learning about new artists, and exploring new subjects. We’re constantly wanting to be inspired and wanting to share what’s inspiring us with others.

Can you offer any tips about organizing these videos on your YouTube channel?
We love organizing the videos into playlists. The playlists feature is great because you can show both breadth and depth of what you’ve curated. We also like changing the featured video three or four times a week so when you go to the Wooster YouTube channel, it’s different each time.

If someone's into street art, what are some of the must-subscribe channels on YouTube relating to that topic?
Some of our favorites are: Walrus TV, Wallkandy and Romanywg.

Which video that you've found do you think is criminally under-seen?
Here’s one of our favorites, a timelapse by our friends The Barnstormers.

Subscribe to the Wooster Collective's YouTube channel to get a notice in your feed every time they favorite, rate or comment on a video.

Know of other great video curators on YouTube or on the Web? Leave their channel name or site URL in the comments below.

Y,000,000,000uTube

2009-10-10T05:07:00.000+11:00

Three years ago today, Steve and I stood out in front of our offices and jokingly crowned ourselves the burger kings of media. We'd just made headlines by joining with Google in our shared goal of organizing the world's information (in our case, video) and making it easily and quickly accessible to anyone, anywhere. Today, I'm proud to say that we have been serving well over a billion views a day on YouTube. This is great moment in our short history and we owe it all to you.

Looking back at those early days, we were committed to some basic principles that have since become fundamental tenets in the world of online video:

Speed matters: Videos should load and play back quickly.
Clip culture is here to stay: Short clips are voraciously consumed and perfect for watching a wide variety of content.
Open platforms open up possibility: Content creation isn't our business; it's yours. We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an Internet connection could share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases make a living from doing so.

Three years after the acquisition, our platform and our business continue to grow and evolve. We are still committed to the same principles that informed the site early on, but we know things have changed. As bandwidth has increased, so has our video quality. As we've started to see demand for longer, full-length content, we've brought more shows and movies to the site. There are now more ways than ever to make and consume content, and more of you are looking to turn your hobby into a real business. We're working hard to keep up with the fast pace of technology to bring you everything you would expect from the world's largest video site: better quality; a full spectrum of choices and tools for users, partners and advertisers; and ways to make the YouTube experience your own anywhere, anytime.

Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-founder

Follow the Announcement of Nobel Prizes in Real-Time on YouTube

2009-10-07T09:37:00.001+11:00

This week, Nobel Prizes will be awarded in a variety of categories, and for the first time you can follow the proceedings live on YouTube. Through October 12, YouTube users can tune in to the Nobel Prize YouTube channel for live-streamed announcements of each prize. This marks the first time that a European event will be live-streamed via YouTube.

Missed the earlier announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine? You can view it here:

The complete schedule of awards announcements is below. Click here to watch them all, live as they unfold:

Physics
Tuesday, October 6: 11.45 a.m. CET, 09.45 a.m. GMT

Chemistry
Wednesday, October 7: 11.45 a.m. CET, 09.45 a.m. GMT

Literature
Thursday, October 8: 1.00 p.m. CET, 11.00 a.m. GMT

Peace
Friday, October 9: 11.00 a.m. CET, 09.00 a.m. GMT

Prize in Economic Sciences
Monday, October 12: 1.00 p.m. CET, 11.00 a.m. GMT

Posted by Kim Alltorp, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Nordic Region

Inside User Research at YouTube

2009-10-06T17:19:00.001+11:00

If you think about watching a video online, it may seem pretty easy. A player, a play/pause button and some content. Done. But what about if the video is being played on a mobile phone? Or on a big screen? What if it's being viewed in Nairobi? Or Shanghai? Now let's say it's being viewed by someone who wants to share her thoughts on the video and by someone who wants to do nothing more than watch more videos. Before you know it, watching a video becomes more complicated than you realise.

Enter user research. While far from providing all the answers, it can help illuminate how the site is actually used -- as opposed to guessing how it might be used or assuming the user is just like the people designing the site.

So what exactly is user research like at YouTube? Sometimes it means letting users design their ideal experience. For example, last year we used a method called FIDO (first utilised by Fidelity Investments) where we cut out different elements of various video sites, stuck them on magnets, and had users arrange their ideal organisation of the elements (see below for an example). Other times we use a more standard research method called a usability study, which entails seeing whether a user can or can't complete certain standard site tasks in a usability lab.

Sometimes having users come into labs is not enough, though; we want to understand how users use YouTube in their context, in their living room, with their laptop on their lap, sprawled out on the couch. In this case we might have field studies where we interview users in their homes. In addition to such qualitative research, we look closely at the behavior of millions of users through traffic analysis and try to understand what users think of the site by deploying thousands of surveys.

We still have a lot left to learn about how people use YouTube, but some things have become clear. One of the most important findings has to do with the difference between the large group of users who are on YouTube simply to watch videos and a smaller, but very important, group of more engaged users -- often uploaders. The latter group will, unsurprisingly, care about details like how to make communication with their audience easier and more effective, how to grow their audience, and even how to make money on YouTube. The former, on the other hand, want as simple of an interface as possible: "Just let me watch the video, please!" You can see this difference in the results of the FIDO experiment we mentioned earlier -- note how differently each kind of user arranged features on the page and the sheer number of elements in the scenario on the right:

To make matters more complicated, not everyone fits nicely into one of the two aforementioned categories -- for instance, there are users who like to watch videos, but they might also occasionally comment or favorite. Their ideal experience likely looks like something in-between the two examples pictured above.

It's not always easy to know what the best balance is for everyone, but we are committed to working towards figuring it out. One thing we know for sure is that at the end of the day, we need to build a product that is easy to use and understand. If it becomes too complicated or cluttered, we'll all need to step back and think again.

If you have any thoughts on this, you can let us know here and see what a user research survey looks like if you haven't encountered one yet. In addition, if you'd like to participate in any upcoming research we have, please fill out this form.

Sasha Lubomirsky, User Experience Researcher, recently watched "Five Years Time"

Release Notes: 10/1/09

2009-10-02T12:03:00.000+10:00

News and notes from our most recent push:

Beginning the conversion of remaining old channels: We're starting the process today to convert all remaining channels still using the older platform to the new one. (This migration could take up to two weeks to complete.) Once again, your comments and feedback have been instrumental in helping the new version evolve and grow (you can see a list of items we addressed here). Now customising and editing your channel is a lot easier, with plenty of options for organizing videos, and the channel refocuses attention on engaging with you and your videos, which, after all, is the centerpiece of any YouTube experience. And - we've got a lot of great ideas and input from you on things you'd like to see next.

YouTube in Portuguese (the European kind): We've added Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal) to the list of languages in which you can experience YouTube. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, find "Current Language" and click on "Show languages." You'll see options there for both Português and Português (Brasil).

Personalised recommendations on the homepage: Recommendations for you aren't just for users with accounts anymore! Now everyone can visit the YouTube homepage to get an answer to the question, "What should I watch today?" We'll automatically generate some suggestions based on your past viewing history. Of course, you'll still get better, more specific, and more consistent recommendations by creating a YouTube account.

The YouTube Team

Wanted: Music lovers to tour the globe

2009-10-02T09:35:00.002+10:00

One of our most popular categories on YouTube is music. As a place to find the hottest new musical talent and videos, it only seems right that you now have the opportunity to win a once-in-a-lifetime prize simply by doing what you already do best - watching music videos and uploading your own content to YouTube!

Universal Music are offering internships for two lucky Australians to travel the world visiting the hottest music festivals and gigs and getting up close and personal with artists and bands backstage. They're looking for passionate, talented and music-obsessed individuals to become the faces of My World Tour globally.

So what are you waiting for?

All the details of how you can get a shot at this amazing job are at youtube.com/myworldtour.

You'll need to create a profile and then make your profile really stand out by linking to videos that you've uploaded to YouTube of yourself at gigs and concerts.

Good luck!

Posted by Christine Knight, YouTube Community

Hackday Yields Easier Way of Sharing Private Videos

2009-10-01T09:00:00.002+10:00

A couple of weeks ago we quietly launched a new and easier way to share private videos: now you can generate a special URL for your private video and send it to up to 25 people, who, assuming they're logged in to YouTube, just have to click to view. This should make it a lot easier for your technically-challenged relatives to watch that video of baby's first steps without having to share it with the whole world.

A neat thing about this feature was that it was an outcome of a recent "hackday" here at YouTube. Hackdays are similar in spirit to "20% time" -- the amount of time in a week engineers at Google/YouTube are encouraged free think and innovate on projects they're passionate about. These efforts allow us to focus on launching smaller features that aren't on our official roadmaps but that we hope are still worthwhile for our users. Anyway, this hackday came with donuts, which were delicious and way too tempting for me to resist. I also had a strong personal motivation for figuring this out: I'm in a hip-hop dance group, and the troupe wanted to share practice videos without going through the process of becoming Friends on YouTube.

Even without any official announcement (until this post, that is!), uptake and usage of this feature has been strong. Here you can see the growth of private-videos-per-day using friend-to-friend sharing versus
the new URL-sharing:

So test it out: go here and click on Edit on any one of your videos. Scroll down to "Broadcasting and Sharing Options," and you should see the privacy settings there. Click on Private to unlock the different ways of sharing the video, including the option to generate a limited-access URL. You can find out more about private videos in this Help Center article.

Mike Lambert, Software Engineer, recently watched "NAME OF VIDEO."

A Year of Interactive Video Annotations

2009-10-01T09:00:00.000+10:00

"Choose a different ending" is an interactive video describing the life of a teenager trying to survive the slums of London. The story, which is shot from a first-person point of view, lets viewers control the hero’s actions (e.g. deciding whether or not he should take his knife to school). Only when the plot reaches one of its grim endings do you realize that the video, commissioned by the London Metropolitan Police, is actually a powerful tool in helping youngsters cope with some of the tough decisions they are faced growing up in a violent environment. This interactive video is a great example of how annotations on YouTube have evolved in just one year: what started as a small-scale experiment is now changing visual storytelling on the web.

If you've seen "Annotations Man," one of many user-created tutorials about annotations, you would have learned that interactive video annotations are a set of simple tools that enable you to add text and hyperlinks directly onto your videos. The feature was originally launched in the summer of 2008; since then, we've seen the featuring being put to use with increasing sophistication to:

Provide dynamic commentary: Basically, this means placing a layer of comments on a video; things like director comments, pet dubbing clips, and how-to tips for everything from origami to guitar lessons.

Add interactive links and menus: Many video-makers use the links to direct traffic to other videos and to create spatial video menus.

Create branching story-lines: Unlike the above two types, which maintain the individual video as the comprehensive story unit, this third group emphasises a collection of videos organised in a hierarchical structure as a new format of storytelling. Here we find a wide spectrum of use cases, including interactive advertisements, murder mysteries and even wacky dating tips.

Play interactive games: The climax of interactive sophistication can be found in these intricate collections of interconnected video elements. Examples include spot the difference, break-dance competitions and this clever ad agency homepage that's actually a YouTube interactive video.

We really find it hard to imagine that all this happened in just one year, and can't wait to see how you might knock us out in 2010. So go ahead and choose your own ending…

Michael Fink, Software Engineer, recently favorited "Annotize me!"

Coming Soon: Finding Your Friends on YouTube

2009-09-24T09:30:00.000+10:00

YouTube has always been a place for you to share and enjoy videos with family and friends. Soon, we'll be making it even easier for you to find people you know on the site. We'll start by launching a "You may know these people" suggestions box on the homepage over the next few weeks that shows you the YouTube channels of people who might be your acquaintances, and lets you easily connect and subscribe to them.

How will we make the suggestions? If you've logged in to YouTube and sent a video to a friend's email address, or if you have your YouTube account linked to a Gmail account, we will use this information to help identify your friends who already have YouTube channels. You'll only see channels whose owners have allowed themselves to be found by others who have their email address.

Want to see if you've previously allowed your channel to be found by others who have your email address, or want to change your settings? Just log in and visit the "Privacy" section of My Account. Look for the checkbox at the top that says "Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address."

Elizabeth Windram, Senior User Experience Designer, recently watched "Folding-Time at Burning Man 2005: One Month at The Man".

5 Stars Dominate Ratings

2009-09-23T08:00:00.001+10:00

This graph fascinated us and so we wanted to share. It shows the number of videos that receive specific star ratings: 1 star for when you loathe something, 5 for when you love it. Judging from this chart, it looks like some of you are moved to rate videos when you don't like them, but the overwhelming majority of videos on YouTube have a stellar 5-star rating:

Seems like when it comes to ratings it's pretty much all or nothing. Great videos prompt action; anything less prompts indifference. Thus, the ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video. Rating a video joins favoriting and sharing as a way to tell the world that this is something you love.

We're glad there are so many awesome videos on YouTube, but all of this begs the question: if the majority of videos are getting 5 stars, how useful is this system really? Would a thumbs up/thumbs down be more effective, or does favouriting do the trick of declaring your love for a video? These are just some of the questions we ask ourselves as we look at data like this and think about how to build the best, most efficient site for you.

What do you think? How useful are ratings? How do you use them? Please leave a comment below.

Shiva Rajaraman, Product Manager, recently rated "Dr Who and the Daleks."

Poll:

How do you feel about ratings on YouTube?

Like 'em
Don't like 'em

User Inspires Favicon Change

2009-09-22T15:25:00.001+10:00

Favicon is short for "Favorites Icon" and it is a square icon that often appears in your Web browser's address bar, as below, or in your list of bookmarks.

An enterprising blogger at Typophile recently pointed out that our favicon was fairly unreadable in a post that caught our eye. We didn't disagree with him and so we took him up on his suggestion, made a few extra tweaks and have now launched it. You can see the improvement in the to-scale before-and-after graphic below. As you can hopefully tell, the favicon on the right is now much more clearly defined.

So thank you, Miha at Typophile, for calling that out and being the catalyst behind this change. You are among the many users who've inspired us to do better, and for that we've got a thank you gift with your name on it heading your way.

Margaret Stewart, User Experience Manager

The YouTube generation? Looks like us.

2009-09-16T09:46:00.002+10:00

We wanted to find out more about Australians on YouTube so we did some research and surveyed over 3,000 Aussie YouTubers... turns out the YouTube generation is as diverse as the Australian population. Here is what we found:

We're large and diverse

Includes all the family - 14-17 year olds only make up 7% of Australian YouTube users, 18-29 = 32%, 30-39 = 20%, 40-49 = 18%, 50-59 = 13% and 60+ = 10%
Are workers, students, stay-at-home mums and retirees - 57% are working, 19% are stay at home, and only 15% are studying
Encompasses all life stages - 55% are married, 35% are single and 9% are divorced
Are not just techies and nerds - 61% of YouTube users are not tech-savvy

We're active and engaged

86% of the community say YouTube is their favourite place to watch videos and 63% agree YouTube is one of their favourite websites
79% stay longer than they intended (on average 1 hour and 09 mins per week).
62% visit at least once a week
47% share videos when they find a video which they love
86% spend time on YouTube for entertainment
2 out of 3 people do more than just watch videos in YouTube
20% uploaded video

We watch a broad range of content:

Posted by Jason Chuck, Marketing team

White Balloon Day

2009-09-08T10:25:00.006+10:00

Partially cross-posted from the Google Australia Blog

Today is White Balloon Day and we're proud to be partnering with Bravehearts to support White Balloon Day and 'break the silence’ on child sexual assault.

To help build awareness, we're pleased to support Bravehearts with a branded YouTube channel to get people involved in protecting children.

It's Child Protection Week this week and a good opportunity to check out the YouTube Safety Centre (www.youtube.com/t/safety), which includes advice on flagging videos, keeping personal videos private, cyberbullying, spam, phishing, and protecting identity.

If you're keen to be involved, check out the Bravehearts White Balloon Day website, where you can buy official White Balloons. You can also make donations to the cause at any Bendigo Bank outlet around Australia.

At YouTube we're committed to making the internet safe and enjoyable for everyone and we believe that the protection of children is paramount.

Posted by Lucinda Barlow, YouTube Australia

Keeping Safe Online

2009-09-03T02:00:00.001+10:00

At YouTube, we believe that education is critically important to help you stay safe online. We're excited to see the new ACMA Cybersmart website: it is full of information for all kinds of people about staying safe online. Check it out and tell your friends!

This is a good opportunity for a refresher in YouTube features that enable safer online behaviour.

Did you know that you can manage your experience on YouTube by:

uploading videos as “Private” to be shared with specified family and friends
blocking specific users from interacting with you
choosing to allow only your “friends” to communicate with you
choosing to pre-screen comments
choosing to disable commenting altogether for each of your videos
choosing to filter the comments you see.

Remember, you can always contact YouTube directly with privacy, harassment, or bullying complaints through the Help & Safety Tool. And make sure you flag any video that you think doesn't comply with the YouTube Community Guidelines.

The YouTube Safety Centre contains great information on cyber citizenship, privacy, cyber bullying, spam and phishing and much more.

Wishing you happy and safe travels around YouTube!

Lucinda Barlow, Communications Manager, YouTube Australia

Vote For Your Favourite Dancer

2009-08-21T14:26:00.001+10:00

Thanks to the So You Think You Can Dance, dance is so hot right now. Not since the '80s and the days of Flashdance and Fame has the medium seen such a resurgence of popularity in movies and TV shows - and we're also seeing it in your YouTube videos.

So whether your style is krumping, hip-hop, West Coast swing or ballet, you'll enjoy checking out the finalists of the MyMutation global dance competition. The Sydney Opera House launched the competition in July, in association with YouTube and Sony, and their channel has received over 97,000 visits from more than 100 countries and territories.

Aspiring dancers from all over the globe entered the competition, highlighting the universal appeal of dance. In the first round, 75 entries were received from as far afield as India, Brazil, Germany, Italy , Mexico, Hawaii, UK, Canada, Russia, Malta, USA, Estonia, South Africa, New Zealand, Portugal and of course, Australia.

We're pleased to announce the winners of this first round: Chaz Cummings (Aus), Courtney Hale (NZ), Ellie Swiatkiwsky (Aus), Emma Watkins (Aus), Erica Fletcher (Aus), Kay Armstrong (UK), Kristyn Bilson (Aus), Leigh Beard UK), Morgan Holt (Aus), Sally Hillier (Aus), Sarah McCreanor (Aus), Nobel Lakave ( Aus) and Simone Chivas (Aus). Go to www.youtube.com/sydneyoperahouse to check out their winning round one entry and video blog.

An eclectic showcase of talent is on display, with styles including belly dancing, Irish jigs and hip-hop, and videos featuring children, animals, and tributes to Michael Jackson.

The 14 finalists now have a week to choreograph another solo and submit it back to Sydney Opera House by 24 August, when the public are invited to vote for their favourite dancer. Five dancers will then be selected to compete in the final round, where the winning dancer will not only experience the thrill of performing their own work live at Sydney Opera House, but also receive $2,000 in cash and a prize pack from Sony including a Handycam camcorder, Cyber-shot camera and a VAIO notebook. Everyone who votes can enter a prize draw to win a Handycam camcorder from Sony, so it's not just the dancers who are in the running to win cool prizes.

MyMutation is part of Spring Dance – the inaugural dance celebration at Sydney Opera House, running from 27 Aug – 27 September. Check it out at youtube.com/sydneyoperahouse.

Imagining the YouTube of the Future

2009-08-21T10:21:00.000+10:00

What will watching video be like a few years from now? That's a question that we ask ourselves a lot here at YouTube. In a recent article in Forbes magazine, we shared a few ideas that we've been kicking around. We wanted to share them with you, too, as well as hear your ideas.

When pondering the future of video, these are some of the questions we ask ourselves:

• How long will people primarily use computers to interact with video? How quickly will they move to their televisions or mobile phones?

• What are new and better ways that will help people discover great videos to watch? What new recommendations can search provide? What about recommendations based on like-minded people? What are your friends and family watching?

• How might we allow people to organise YouTube for themselves? How can the experts in our community help us curate YouTube's massive collection?

In thinking about these questions, we've come to realize that YouTube's design needs to evolve to answer them. We want to find innovative and useful ways to surface recommendations to you, and we'll need to create the breakthrough tools that empower you to take center stage in this role.

The YouTube User Experience team uses storyboards to visualize ideas and kick off discussions about new products that will keep YouTube on the forefront of video technology. In the examples below, we used a nifty application called Comic Life that makes storyboarding fast and easy. These are snippets from two storyboards/scenarios that we used internally to talk about the YouTube of the future:

Those are just some of the ideas that we have been discussing. It's hard to predict the future, but it's one of the most fun and interesting parts of our job.

What do you think the future of video will hold? What do you want to see us do in one, two, or even five years? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Margaret Stewart, User Experience Manager, recently watched "Keyboard Cat Supports Michael Vick."

"Just-in-Time" Learning About Flagged Videos

2009-08-14T16:00:00.000+10:00

Sometimes it happens. You've read the Community Guidelines, you think you understand the rules, and you upload videos that you believe comply with them. Then one day you receive a message from us informing you that one of your videos has "been disabled for violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines."

"Huh?" you ask yourself. "What's the connection between the Community Guidelines and my video?" Starting today, we'll help answer that question by including tips from the Community Guidelines in the messages we send you if we take down one of your videos.

For example, you post a video that features nudity. When it gets flagged by the YouTube community and removed by our staff, you'll receive this reminder: "Most nudity is not allowed on YouTube, particularly if it is in a sexual context. Videos that are intended to be sexually provocative are also generally not acceptable for YouTube. There are exceptions for some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not sexually gratuitous."

We think of this as "just-in-time" learning to help you make and upload videos that stay up on the site for the world to see.

Posted by the YouTube Team

Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment

2009-08-14T08:27:00.000+10:00

Do small changes make a big difference? In the world of landing page testing, they certainly can. A few weeks ago, we ran one of the largest multivariate experiments ever: a 1,024 recipe experiment on 100% of our US-English homepage. Utilizing Google Website Optimizer, we made small changes to three sections on our homepage (see below), with the goal of increasing the number of people who signed up for an account. The results were impressive: the new page performed 15.7% better than the original, resulting in thousands more sign-ups and personalized views to the homepage every day.

Below is a screenshot of the homepage before the test and the three sections we focused on:

And here are examples of various fonts, messages, and colors we tested:

Section 1: (The words "Sign Up" were put in all caps)

Section 2: (We placed these bubble messages to the left of the word "Sign Up")

Section 3: (We experimented with these different banners in that area)

Can you guess which combination of elements performed the best?

(humming "Jeopardy" music)

If you guessed the Original "Sign Up" Font (section 1) + Red Bubble "Sign Up" (section 2) + White "Don't Just Watch, Participate" box (section 3), you win!

Winning Page:

While we could have hypothesized which elements result in greater conversions (for example, the color red is more eye-catching), multivariate testing reveals and proves the combinatorial impact of different configurations. Running tests like this also help guide our design process: instead of relying on our own ideas and intuition, you have a big part in steering us in the right direction. In fact, we plan on incorporating many of these elements in future evolutions of our homepage.

Curtis Lee, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "KFC Freestyle Delonte West."

P.S. If you need assistance running tests on your website, there are many Google Website Optimizer authorized consultants who can help. Special thanks to VKI Studios who assisted on ours.

Masthead Undergoes Redesign

2009-08-13T11:02:00.001+10:00

You may notice something looks a little different about our masthead (top navigational area on the homepage) today, and that's because we've done a bit of housecleaning. We've streamlined and simplified the design to focus on the primary experience of YouTube: watching a video. The left side is dedicated to exploration: finding videos to watch through search and browse. The right side is all about organization of the videos that matter most to you: your subscriptions, your recent viewing history, and your own uploads.

A few features have been removed from this area, to keep it as clean and functional as possible. Unless you have your items in your Quicklist or Inbox, they will not appear on the homepage, and the country and language pulldown menus, once at the very top of the page, are now in the footer.

Next up, we'll be focusing on giving you the controls to make the masthead more personalized.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Shiva Rajaraman, Product Manager, recently favorited "Auto-Tune the News #7."

Yo! Megan Fox and Vin Diesel -- You Think You're Better Than Us?

2009-08-07T10:21:00.000+10:00

OK, Ashton might have more followers on Twitter than
we do, but we're not going quietly into the night. Let's take a
friendly celebrity tussle to Facebook, shall we? where we've got the 12th most popular Product/Celebrity fan page
(thankyouverymuch). With 3.1 million fans, we're hovering above Mr.
Demi Moore, Rihanna and, er, potato chips (Pringles). That's not too
bad, but our sights are on you, Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam
Sandler and Vin Diesel. You stand in our way of leaderboard glory so
it's time for a good old fashioned Internet showdown.

You heard it here: we're going to pass these celebs in the next 60 days and if we don't, we'll eat humble pie and
spotlight video(s) on our homepage for the
nonprofit or non-commercial cause of their choosing. It's a stretch
goal, to be sure, as we'd have to gain approximately the following
numbers of fans to beat...

Adam Sandler: 150K
Lady Gaga: 290K
Will Smith: 965K
Megan Fox: 1.4M
Vin Diesel: 2.2M

Think we can do it? Help us get there by joining our Facebook group
now. Because we so want to be able to say that we're stronger than Vin
Diesel, cooler than Will Smith and hotter than Megan Fox.

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently favorited "J.J. Abrams: The mystery box."

Yes Premier!

2009-07-08T09:00:00.001+10:00

Citizens of Victoria, the Premier of Victoria has opened up his YouTube Channel for question time. For more information, watch this brief introduction from Premier Brumby:

You can exercise your democratic right - submit your questions for Premier Brumby on any issue relating to Victoria and vote on the questions submitted by others, like these:

Yours,

Lucinda Barlow

YouTube Australia

Upload Size Doubles + HD Tips

2009-07-02T17:00:00.001+10:00

Many of you have been asking for an increase in the size limit of your uploads. We're happy to announce that the size of standard uploads has doubled from 1GB to 2GB. The increase means you can upload longer videos at a higher resolution as well as large HD files directly from your camera.

In addition, the team's implemented some new features to make it easier for you to show these videos off to the world. The changes allow you to share links directly to the HD version of your video, as well as embed the HD version on your blog or website. Here's how:

* To share a link to the HD version of your video, simply append &hd=1 to the end of the URL. This means the video will start playing in HD as soon as someone follows the link. Cool, huh?

* To embed the HD version of a video on a website or blog, click the 'customize' button to the right of the embed box on the video page. Some options will appear; simply check 'play in HD'. The embed code that's generated will cause the video to start playing in HD as soon as a viewer clicks play. We recommend embedding HD videos at the largest size (853x505) for maximum enjoyment.

If you haven't yet started uploading your content in HD, see our Help Center article for more information on how to do so. You can also browse some popular HD videos here.

Enjoy!

Ryan Junee

Product Manager

The YouTube Team