Adopt a Feature: All Hail MikeandToneRP

Lots of good news to report since we last spoke about Adopt a Feature v2. This round, the number of submissions to the program more than doubled -- 76 videos were made about annotations, tags, Quicklist, mobile uploads, the customized homepage and a few other features -- and in all they were viewed 407,994 times. Annotations were the most popular feature to adopt by far, and you had a lot of fun with it: KOHPelord literally brought an annotation to life to explain the feature, while DeStorm envisioned a superhero named "Annotation Man" to save the day.

But the most-viewed video of the bunch, and thus the winner of this edition of Adopt a Feature, was MikeandToneRP's exploration of tags, featuring an off-kilter "Megan Fox," viewed nearly 80K times. Congratulations, Mike! Look out for a YouTube T-shirt headed your way.

In addition, many current and past Adopt a Feature videos have found permanent, loving homes in our Help Center, where they can "give back" by enlightening anyone looking for more info. The list below covers just some of the places you'll find your tutorial videos helping other users out:

• Quicklist featuring LaughingLeaf's video
• YouTube With My Webcam featuring incorporatedfx's video
• Learn More About Insight featuring BeforeAndAfterTV's video
• Subscribing to Videos featuring Yobachi2007's video
• How to Add Closed Captions and Subtitles featuring SandburgSpartans' video

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently favorited "Metal Heart by Keith Loutit - in HD."

Masthead Undergoes Redesign

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 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."

Adopt a Feature v2: Who Will Be the New Champ?

Recently, we announced that a new set of features was in need of your loving care. Over 50 of you heeded round 1 champion thecomputernerd01's call to help -- that is, to make a video explaining to the YouTube community how annotations, tags, Quicklist, mobile uploads and/or the customized homepage work. Almost 50% of the group chose to "adopt" annotations, and tags and Quicklist also received a decent amount of attention. You even made videos about a few features not on the list, like captions, the new channel design and widescreen viewing. So far, the videos submitted for this round have been viewed over 34K times and already there are some choice tutorials out there, such as...

...MikeandToneRP's explanation of tags, starring Megan Fox (um, not):

...LaughingLeaf's video on Quicklist, complete with a blooper reel:



...AJCShow's fast n' easy overview of sending a video from your phone to YouTube:



We'll be showcasing some of the best submissions on the homepage on Thursday, July 30, beginning at 6am PT, so it's not too late for your moment in the sun. Simply make a video about any or all of the features listed at the start of this blog post, and include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags. Share your video far and wide -- our autoshare feature will help a lot with that -- and try to build views for it. It's one of the factors we'll use to decide who makes it to the homepage and who takes the crown for this edition of the program.

Anyway, it's almost the weekend, so go forth and adopt (a feature)!

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently watched "Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend."

Adopt a Feature v2

You may remember the inaugural edition of Adopt a Feature, for which you made videos about AudioSwap, Country Pulldown, Insight, Playlists, Quick Capture, and Subscriptions. These videos generated 818,698 views (they're all collected here) and a bunch of them even got featured on our homepage. At the end of the two month run, thecomputernerd01 was crowned the Adopt a Feature king, thanks to his zany explanation of how the country/language pulldown menus work -- a video that accounted for a third of all of the program's views. He also got this awesome T-shirt.

Josh took a break from ribbing his grandpa to tell you why you should get involved with Adopt a Feature v2.



In case you're still buzzing from Josh's high-energy onslaught, here's what you need to know: Make a video about any or all of the features on the list below (click on the name of the feature to get more information about it). Include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags -- this is important; it's how we'll locate your video for inclusion on our channel and possibly on the YouTube homepage.

* Annotations
* Customize Your Homepage
* Tags
* Quicklist
* Mobile Upload

(By the way, for folks waiting to hear more about the roll-out of new channels, we should have an update in a few days.)

Posted by Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management