YouTube Gets Twitterish
Mar 27th, 2009 | By Elisabeth Lewin | Category: Educational Podcasts, VideoFrom the YouTube blog yesterday came word of changes to how the video site announces updates and new features.
“[A]fter watching you guys take to the forums and Twitter to discuss what else has changed, we figured more frequent, casual “release notes” would be good to publish as well. That way you can get a broader sense of what’s new on the site, from major features to cosmetic touches, as well as background on the thinking or motivation behind some of these items. ”
Changes to YouTube include:
- Upload Progress Bar: A new Flash uploader is available “for all supported browsers” and has an upload progress bar that lets you know the status of your upload.
- Simpler HD Parameter: An official URL parameter (hd=1) for sharing HD links.
- Twitter Updates: YouTube have added a “share to Twitter” button (at right) under the Share options. (YouTube does not auto-shorten the video URL, so you’ll have to do the bit.ly or tinyURL thing yourself.)
- YouTube Educational Hub Launches: YouTube EDU is a volunteer project working to collect and highlight educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. The YouTube team says, “Using YouTube as a vehicle to democratize learning is one of the coolest, unintended outcomes of its existence. “
- Mobile Improvements: In addition to launching a new mobile landing page, the upload flow from phone-to-YouTube should become more streamlined. Stating the obvious [a year behind the times], they say “mobile is a key component of how people will consume video in the future.”
- EasierLogin: If your YouTube account is associated with your Google account, you need only sign in once.
- Cleaner Watch Pages: Changes include - a) the action links are a bit smaller and more condensed; b) eliminated the tabs for Comments, Statistics & Data and replaced them with expandable/collapsible sections A broader watch page redesign is underway as well.
- Easier to use YouTube as social network: YouTube have added the ability for users to send an invitation and personalized note to a username or email address. There’s also an “instant friend link” for IM. http://www.youtube.com/my_friends_invite.
altlate news.