So I noticed a shiny new feature the other day on YouTube, the ability to pop out the video or to “Watch this video in new window” on certain videos.
Now so far the only video I have come across using this feature is a 1:05:37 long talk from Vint Cerf and amazingly, I have yet to find a bug… and there’s only 1 improvement i would like to see at the moment.
So on videos using the feature you see a little TV shaped square with an arrow pointing into the top right corner right next to the Turn Down the Lights button.
When you click this it pauses the video on the main page and loads the video in the pop-up as you can see below.
This seems to work pretty well and is a nice little idea, but it can be taken further, now i have been watching this hour long talk and i want to watch the video in a new window after 20 minutes and the pop-up opens and starts playing from the beginning, which isn’t a massive deal but it would be a lot easier if it resumed from where you were watching, like BBC iPlayer can.
I was checking out the shows on YouTube now to see if they had any others since i last looked, and i immediately see Britain’s got Talent…
I live in Britain. This is a British show. Shown on British TV. Why the F#!? isn’t it available on YouTube in Britain… I mean come on! Are you Sh!ttin’ me?!
And yes… I am submitting this to Fail Blog.
So much for me watching Susan Boyle again and again… guess will have to just watch all the clips uploaded without permission of the show eh… instead of the version which YouTube can put specially targeted high quality high return ads on.
Well i have been on and off YouTube all day and finally seen a mention about the TV shows and Films which are supposed to come in and take over normal videos and all this crap… and YouTube just tweeted about they blog post on the matter so i thought i would check it out and share with you my views, however as its almost 4am I will leave that till the morning… but i will leave you with a few thoughts on the new Beta layout for the user page.
Beta Profile Layout/Design
First off this morning on my twitter i saw Alan (fallofautumndistro) was chatting about the new Beta profile layouts (i naturally activated mine and you can take a look here)
As you can see its a totally different look and puts a lot more focus on the users videos themselves. This in my view is a good thing, and YouTube have said in their blog post about the new channel design, that it does need more work and new features are on the way soon hopefully.
Personally I’m hoping the upcoming features include more usability and interactivity with the videos themselves i would love to be able to do everything i can on the normal video page on the user page as well, thus enabling the page to “channel” all that users content to you without having to leap frog back and forth between videos and users channel which never made sense to me…
Btw, Don’t worry about opting in to using the new Beta design, YouTube save everything about your current profile design so you can easily revert back if you don’t like things!
I really am blogging too much about YouTube… noticed this earlier where on the “Spotlight” (that’s the feature page for any one who understands logic) and they have a “promoted” video which was covering up half the thumb nails!!
Now obviously this is because they changed the ad format size and added the box bit below the video, but surely this should have been noticed?
Yet more proof that YouTube don’t properly check their site before making changes, which while this is all good for smaller even medium to large size sites YouTube which is one of the largest sites in the world, a site which uses MORE bandwidth than the WHOLE of the Internet used in 2000. This is a BIG site owned by one of the largest companies i history and yet they can do basic things to provide a professional looking website…
I really do use YouTube way too much, and I can’t actually remember the last time i blogged something which wasn’t YouTube related, mostly mess ups admittedly and this post is no different…
So was just browsing around looking at videos subscribing to way too many people as usual and then the YouTube logo was randomly showing in the share area…
So I’m not quite sure what exactly happened there, so naturally first thought – I shall blog this and the beloved print screen was taken and is now shown above, i refreshed a few moments later and it was gone.
Now i have to be honest, I’m not sure why this happened, it could have just been FireFox being a bit weird and not correctly loading the CSS image sprite or maybe someone was playing with the design at YouTube? who knows (well someone at YouTube i guess) just amused me.
Which is why i decided to blog it at 4am in the morning when i really should get some sleep.
O well, Night x
P.S I think I will create a YouTube category for all these posts, they deserve it!
So literally only a few minutes ago a massive advert appeared on the YouTube homepage. Couple this with the country/language localisation selection box which seems to be stuck to the page no matter what I do this massive add now means i have to scroll a full page to view homepage content.
Now I am by no means a small minded ranter, i know Google has been in desperate need of a way to raise revenue from YouTube as it eats money like no bodies business – Its estimated YouTube sends a whopping 1 terabyte of data every single second, that’s around 858993459200 bits/second now consider this a high end server might have a 1Gbit card (google might have got high capacity transfer rate cards on there specialised custom web servers which they developed); so if we assume they are using a 1Gbit card on each server that still means they would need 858,993,460 servers! Naturally since Google own YouTube LLC they will share DCs but bottom line YouTube – Millions of USD pouring out in every possible direction with millions spent on bandwidth, power, engineers every hour you can see why its important to get some serious monetization out of the site, and i would guess Sony are lining Googles pockets very nicely for this very large very bold advert on their homepage, but i have to question, is this going to be beneficial in the long run?
Partners can have ads on their videos yet i am not in the habit to immediately click the X instantly, and they are little more than a annoyance.
And for me the same goes for the new big bad ad on their homepage, which just delays me getting to their most valuable asset. The Content.
So what do you think? Should YouTube start sticking large ads on the pages, or should they try more subtle routes of raising funds, maybe extending the buy functionality on music videos, such as adding more vendors other than iTunes! – Amazon maybe? Of course they could always try the possibility of opening up more features to normal users instead of just partners, if every video had adverts they could make a lot more money from the clicks…
Or maybe selling “bug” space on their video player, like on some TV stations where you have “BBC” in the corner of the screen; this is a perfectly workable model which YouTube could introduce where for example Nike’s tick logo shows in the corner of every video for a few days, massive advertising for Nike which would increase brand awareness and yet discrete advertising which doesn’t get in the way of what the user wants, the content, videos, users community.
Comments and thoughts appreciated, comment below send me a message anything you like always good to talk to people.
I was supposed to write and post this a few days ago when it was more relevant but, its still at thing which bugged me and will come up again when YouTube next have maintenance time.
So when YouTube put up their maintenance notice (shown below) in the evening on the 31st preparing to go into “maintenance” to (presumably) sort out their April fools prank of flipping things upside down, and fixing something to do with video ratings, at least that’s what i think as all ratings were disabled before the maintenance which isn’t usually done unless they have the tool kit and are having a play with things.
I noticed something which bugged me a little because its something which always frustrates me when sites and in particular sites like YouTube which i use a lot obviously put a lot of effort (or claim to) in localising the content to its users – not the annoying box asking me which country settings i want for the 4 millionth time – and yet for some reason YouTube have neglected to add a very simple line if that of code to show the time of maintenance in MY local time. I simply ask, why? I am in the UK so i work of BST (British Summer Time) / GMT but the time gets displayed as PDT which means for me to know what time YouTube is opening their tool kit i need to then waste 5 minutes trying to find out what “7:00 pm PDT” is in my local time, when YouTube themselves can do this without a second thought.
So YouTube. Why? Why not make things simple and easy for your users?
Honestly can't believe how much fun I had at the pub with friends tonight. Was awesome. 3 hours ago
@bennuk Not even sure where it is tbh! Sounds like a fun outing though I must say The tech geek in my would explode from what @rogem002 said 11 hours ago
@vps247 Hows the reseller feats coming along? Now that's something I'm dying to see! 12 hours ago
Hmm... @Rogem002 is making me rather jealous of his Microsoft Experience with @Bennuk ... I want to go... badly. 13 hours ago
@Rogem002 Stop bragging, your making me green. 14 hours ago
... you know when people say I should just stop being moody and "keep it inside" they have no clue how much IS being kept inside GRRR 18 hours ago
