YouTube Labs Introduces The Smiley Face Factory™

The most important things to us here at YouTube are 1) listening to our users 2) bringing them the best online video experience with the most cutting edge features and functionality possible. For quite some time our users have been asking us for the ability to upload pictures to their profile. While this would have been a pretty straight forward request for us to grant, we wanted to do something bigger and better than just plain old, boring profile pictures. Come on, everybody does profile pictures. Profile pictures are so Web 1.0. YouTube is about creativity, self-expression, broadcasting yourself to the world - and our users deserve something better.




So, we sent our big brains at YouTube Labs off to solve this dilemma and what they came back with, is absolutely revolutionary. The technology for this new feature is not quite ready for prime time, but we're so excited about it, we had to share it and give you a glimpse of what is yet to come. It's with great pride that I introduce to you.......The Smiley Face Factory™!



You can see below an example of how The Smiley Face Factory™ will work, you select the eyes, nose and mouth you feel best represents your mood at any given point in time and voilà! you've got a new Smiley Face (of course your face may actually not be so smiley depending on your mood). We believe The Smiley Face Factory™ will revolutionize how the online world expresses itself and will push the boundaries of Web 2.0 into Web 3.0.



Stay tuned for the release of The Smiley Face Factory™, and other new and exciting features from YouTube Labs. And as always, we encourage your thoughts and feedback.


Best,

Maryrose


The YouTube Team

The Smiley Face Factory :*)™   Eyes: : ; = % 8 B X   Nose: ^ * # - . >   Mouth: ) P ( 8 * S D O C I \ } ] [ J r > @ X     :^)

Your 15 Minutes of Fame..ummm...Make that 10 Minutes or Less

The past few months have been phenomenal for us here at YouTube, thanks to all of you. We've been going through unprecedented growth. Most days it seems we can barely catch our breath trying to keep up with everything, and sometimes I sit at my desk and look around at the 20 or so people around me and cannot believe how far we've come in such a short period of time. No matter how fast we grow or how large we may become, our primary goal is, and will always be, about being in touch with our users and providing them the best online video experience possible. That being said, we've gotten a fair amount of emails lately about the new 10 minute limit we've implemented for video uploads. For those of you not familiar with this change, we've always had a 100MB file limit for uploads. We also recently implemented a 10 minute length limit. This change won't impact the vast majority of our users. We know that over 99% of videos uploaded are already under 10 mins, and we also know that most of our users only watch videos that are under about 3 minutes in length.



So, if most of our users are uploading and watching short form video clips, why even bother to make the change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it right? Well, if you've followed our blog postings or any of the press articles, you know we're constantly trying to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of our users. We poked around the system a bit and found that these longer videos were more likely to be copyrighted videos from tv shows and movies than the shorter videos posted. However, we also recognize that there are legit content creators out there who may have videos over 10 mins, so we've created a Premium Content Program for those of you with professional-produced videos.



What about the little guys you ask? We hear ya. We know that although most users are uploading short form clips, there are those of you out there that are video bloggers or amateur film makers that have legitimate, user generated content over 10 mins, and obviously, this is not an ideal situation for you. We recognize that, and we're actively working on a solution that will allow for those of you with longer form user generated content, while still preventing copyrighted full length episodes from entering the system. In fact, if you are a user with videos over 10 mins, please contact us. We want to hear from you. We want to know how you've been impacted by this change and any thoughts or ideas you may have.



Remember: this site is about you, and we're listening.



Best,

Maryrose


The YouTube Team

That's Entertainment

You’re probably wondering about the MTV2 clip and “official partner” logo on our home page. In addition to all your videos, we are starting to feature entertaining, professional clips such as scenes from the MTV2 Andy Milonakis Show promoting the new season that starts March 31st. This is just a start, we’re in discussions with lots of networks, movie studios and record labels to feature more cool videos on YouTube.



We know you’re passionate about watching and sharing videos. These new partners will enhance the entertainment experience on YouTube where the majority of the videos will continue to be contributed by you. Also, please keep telling us which videos you want us to feature on our home page.



And, happy Tubing!

Your Features Have Arrived!

Hello members! You may have noticed we were down for a while upgrading the site. We listened to you and added in a few of the most requested features. We also added a bunch of things in the background that will make the site faster.



Personalized Profiles

Tired of not being able to choose which picture goes on your profile? Well breathe a sigh of relief, you can now select a main profile video. While you're at it, change how your profile looks with custom skins. Then post a bulletin about it (and maybe attach a video) and it will appear on all of your friend's profiles. Finally, you can direct people to your snazzy new profile with your new easy to remember URL (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/user/yourname) where they can leave you comments about how cool it is.


View Your Profile | Edit Your Profile



Hello Fans!

Members have been begging us to let them see who has marked their videos as a Favorite. Who are your fans? Click the My Videos link to see the number of "fans" each video has, then click on the number to see who they are!



Better Searching

In addition to searching through members, groups and videos, you can now search playlists! Plus we added a bunch of filters so that you can sort search results by any or all of the following: Title, Time Added, Number of Views, Rating, Username (when searching members) and Group Name (when searching groups).



Continuous Play

Playlists are a great way to organize a bunch of different YouTube videos all in one place. Now you can you search for playlists, and when you find one you like, you can play it continuously with the new Play All button! Then you can share it or embed it on a website.


Manage Your Playlists



Import Contacts

Thanks to some clever software called Plaxo, you can import friends and contacts automatically from Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, and others. Just click the "Import email addresses" link from the "Invite Your Friends" page!



Premium Content Registration

Professional producers like television networks, movie studios and record labels are now able to join YouTube and take advantage of special branding and features. So keep an eye out for a lot of cool new videos!


Premium Content Registration



A Word on Safety

In the last two months we've gone from 3 million videos a day to 25 million (and counting!). You never know who is going to see what you post. With that in mind, we've put together some tips for staying safe on YouTube and helping out your fellow members, check it out.




That's it for now! Stay tuned, and keep broadcasting!



The YouTube Team

Lazy Sunday

Hi Tubers! NBC recently contacted YouTube and asked us to remove Saturday Night Live's "Lazy Sunday: Chronicles of Narnia" video. We know how popular that video is but YouTube respects the rights of copyright holders. You can still watch SNL's "Lazy Sunday" video for free on NBC's website.

Some good news: we are happy to report that YouTube is now serving up more than 15 million videos streamed per day- that's nearly 465M videos streamed per month with 20,000 videos being uploaded daily.

Keep broadcasting!

It's Hammer Time!

Things are really picking up around here. Not only are we adding servers and bandwidth as fast as we can, we're also pleased to report that last month's kitchen sink upgrade was successfully integrated into the snack area and we hope to have that dirty dishes bug patched shortly.

As if we didn't have enough reasons to be excited, the other night we got a visit from MC HAMMER! Hammer came by the office to lend a hand and showed us the sweet new video for his song Look. While Hammer was here he dropped some serious science about the recording industry and taught us the difference between Hyphy, Thizz and Krumping. Check out the video, it's totally hyphy (see??). We gave him the grand tour and of course shot some video. Be sure to check out our awesome giant-curtain-wall-substitutes and the crazy tribal pattern we pimped our office walls with (it actually represents bandwidth but we all got it tattooed on our ankles anyway).

More Feature Fun

We've just rolled out a bunch of cool new features. Many of these come straight from requests or suggestions from all of you, so please keep those ideas coming.

• Groups brings Tubers Together
  
  Sure, it's great to send your favorite videos to your friends and family, but now you can take it one step further and create (or join) groups to share and discuss videos with other YouTube members! Each group has it's own forum, and for added control the group founder can decide if they want the group to be public and open to everyone, or private where membership is granted by request or invitation only. As a group founder you get to choose a custom URL for the group - your very own little video home on the web! So whether you join a public group to connect with other members who have the same video interests that you do, or create a private group to securely share and discuss videos with your friends and family - there's a group for you. Getting started is easy, just click on the Groups tab and start browsing or creating!




• I want my RSS!
  
  By popular demand, we've added a ton of new RSS feeds. You can now subscribe to several different feeds for categorized groups of videos (such as recently uploaded, recently featured, top viewed etc), as well as customized feeds for users and tags. You can even get a feed for this blog! Check out our new and improved RSS page and start subscribing!




• Friends Reloaded
  
  One of the areas we get a lot of questions about is friends management - how to delete a friend, how to organize friends etc. Well, we've heard you loud and clear and have (hopefully) dramatically simplified this process. When you visit the Friends tab, you can now easily delete a friend, or create personalized contact lists with a simple click of the mouse (well, maybe two clicks, but it's still really easy).




• Search and Ye Shall Find
  
  Searching on YouTube just got a whole lot easier. No more scrolling through pages and pages of search results to find the video you want, you can now filter your results by relevance, date added, title, view count or rating.