Official YouTube Blog

YouTube Blogging in 2009

31 Aralık 2009 Perşembe

Google brethrennew productsevolution of our social featureslive streamed eventsWhat You Watched and Searched for on YouTube in 20091080pShows & MoviesNew Channels Coming SoonRelease NotesCurator showcasesVideo Volunteersraising money to build wells in Africalaunching a label for YouTube musiciansthe first user hitting 1 million subscribersfree expression in Iran.. behind the scenesthe thought that goes into product developmentstatswrap our heads aroundtrash talkingBiz BlogSpanish-language blogCreator's Corner blogBlogger platformMia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "Bacon Candy Party Sticks."

YouTube's Top 10 Launches of 2009

31 Aralık 2009 Perşembe

Did you know that we released more features in 2009 than in 2007 and 2008 combined? This made it the busiest year on record for the YouTube product and engineering teams. Some of these launches, like support for 1080p, made sizable splashes, while others, like "trending topics" appearing at the bottom of the browse page, went out with less fanfare. With so much going on, we wanted to pause before the new year begins to review the things that hopefully made the biggest impact on your overall YouTube experience:

Auto-Share - As part of our wider effort to integrate YouTube into the social and communication platforms you use every day, AutoShare automatically syndicates your YouTube activity to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader.

1080p - In November, we unveiled support for videos in 1080p (aka "full HD"). Want to test it out? Check out this video.

Auto-Speech Recognition - Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, coupled with YouTube's captioning system, makes videos more accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired. This same speech recognition technology can create machine-generated captions, which can then be translated into 51 languages.

Mobile Website for Smartphones - Watching videos on -- and uploading videos from -- cell phones is more popular than ever. To meet this demand, we launched a new mobile website designed to make using YouTube on smartphones like the iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre a lot easier.

YouTube XL - YouTube XL optimizes YouTube for large screens. In addition to offering larger text and simplified navigation, XL has a continuous play feature, allowing you to search for a topic, hit "play" and then kick back for an uninterrupted viewing experience.

VEVO - VEVO.com is a partnership that blends Google and YouTube's technology with music videos from a broad catalog of artists from Universal Music Group, Sony Music and EMI. The site hopes to redefine the way people watch and engage with music online, as well as change the way the digital and music industries do business with each other.

Feather - Feather is a stripped-down version of the page on which any video plays. Without all but the basic features, the page loads more quickly and videos play back faster. Give it a whirl in TestTube or click here.

3D - In July, one of our engineers used his free time to implement easier viewing options for 3D videos on YouTube. Here's a brief overview video.

Real-Time Comment Search - In October, we released the ability to search YouTube comments in real-time. The comment appears on a continuously updated results page, and "trending topics" indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment.

Shows & Movies - In April, we rolled out a destination sporting hundreds of movies and thousands of full-length TV episodes. Offerings have included film classics like Taxi Driver, Ghostbusters and the Spaghetti Western Trilogy, as well as current TV shows from broadcasters like C4 and Channel 5 in the UK.

Which of these features is your favorite? Please use the poll in the top right corner of this blog to let us know what you've found to be most useful in '09, or leave a comment below if there's another feature that had an important impact on your YouTube life.

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, and John Harding, Engineering Manager

Ordinary Citizens, Extraordinary Videos

29 Aralık 2009 Salı

[cross-posted from the CitizenTube blog]

marchingbattlingdyingwatchingunfilteredunediteddisturbing

We are constantly amazed by the videos our community uploads, whether from their own backyards or the streets of a faraway land. Armed with only a camera and a means to reach the Internet, anyone can ask another to bear witness to their lives. Given the nature of the YouTube videos from Iran, we may want to turn away from some of the images we see, but we keep watching, knowing that we are seeing through the eyes of a people who have discovered the power of information — despite the often extreme measures their government is using to try to stop them.

We will continue to provide the platform for you to see what they see, hear their voices and learn about their struggles. And we encourage you to join the global conversation. Leave a comment, upload your own response video or share a moving moment with someone else.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics, recently watched "29 Dec 09 Tehran Science & Technology university students protest against the government of Iran."

One Week to Make Your Pitch to Attend Davos!

28 Aralık 2009 Pazartesi

Davos YouTube channel

Steve Grove, News & Politics, recently watched "Mahmoud Jabari - Davos Competition."

Shining a Light on Human Rights Abuses Through Film

27 Aralık 2009 Pazar

Iran protestsuprising of monksMorgan Freeman's heartfelt call-out video

Today, the top three selections will appear on the YouTube homepage to raise awareness of several pressing human rights issues. We're also featuring Morgan Freeman's "volunteer" video for Amnesty International, which uses claymation to discuss the power of words in fighting injustice:

We'll be back with another round of Video Volunteers in January and our spotlight issue will be the arts, so if you're an arts organization who would like a volunteer to create a video for you, please fill out this form and your opportunity will be posted to the Video Volunteers channel.

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism, recently watched "Maya Lin: Unchopping a Tree."

Follow Santa's Journey!

23 Aralık 2009 Çarşamba

www.noradsanta.orgNoradsanta.orgm.noradsanta.orgthe NORAD Tracks Santa YouTube channel

Jeff Martin, Santa Wannabe, recently watched "How to Grow a Beard in 3 Easy Steps!"

Make Way for youtu.be Links

21 Aralık 2009 Pazartesi

It's all the rage: link shorteners to ensure that those useful URLs you're sharing don't take up too much precious character count while also giving you an inkling of what you're about to click on. Well, we've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for YouTube video links -- and nothing but YouTube links -- so you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video. (Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you're going to see, developers can do interesting things like show you thumbnails, embed the video directly, or track how a video is spreading in real-time.)To see this feature in action, use AutoShare to link up your YouTube account to social networks like Twitter and Google Reader. Then, whenever you favorite a video on YouTube, for example, that action will get syndicated out to your network, who will see this shortened edition of the video's URL.To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/" to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you'll see it redirects to that video.Vijay Karunamurthy, Engineering Manager, recently watched "Suzy Snowflake" again, thanks to Diablo Cody.

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