YouTube has just released their biggest design change in history – and it’s starting to feel a little more like a social network that married a TV Guide and had DirectTV has a child.
Following activity on interesting channels and keeping track of what your friends like and comment on just got easier thanks to the new activity “Feed”. You can feature other channels on your own channel’s sidebar. Interacting with Facebook seems easier. Revived YT Analytics provide better information about your channel’s activity – viewer demographics, activity snapshots and reporting drill-downs to name a few.
Check out some of the changes for yourself:
YouTube Front Page: YouTube
New Channel Layout: http://youtube.com/jaytoddmartin
Feed Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/jaytoddmartin/feed
Of course YouTube users hate the changes. Overall most feedback on the design changes have been extremely negative. It seems like everyone that found a way to make the old layout work is now back at square one. The top comments on the video I embedded above aren’t even postable on this blog…lol.
It’s funny to note that at the time I posted this article the official YouTube Video about the layout changes (above) had encountered the infamous Views freeze.
Complained about by many YT users, the Views Freeze Glitch occurs when the view count for a video stops in the 300′s not matter how many views it has got in reality. Notice how the video only shows 310 views but shows 3000+ dislikes!
YouTube recently announced a huge swing to profitability after settling billions of dollars of pending lawsuits (lmao). In addition to already having an active pay per view movie service, YT has recently announced it will offer premium channels mimicking television. They’ve just paid 100 different organizations an estimated $100 million to bring their content to YT. I think after all that they hired some additional designers.
By radically changing their design, YouTube is creating a better environment for their Premium Movie and Premium Channel services. Now, YT has their eye on one key metric – Time on Site. In order to continue growing profit and views, YT must keep users on the site for longer than 20 minutes (the current average YT usage per day per user).
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The blog of a nomadic internet marketer, web host owner, dating site owner and web developer.
Happy to say I watched my first “rented” YouTube video on Thursday. “The Hangover” was awesome and the quality was great! Netflix beware!