YouTube redesigns their video page

In a fairly unanticipated move, YouTube has released a new design for their video pages. There is now more focus on three core elements. The video is one, which now appears less cluttered. The second is comments which now sit directly below and much closer to the video itself and related videos now takes the entire right column all to itself. Ancillary functions like sharing, embed codes and other bits and pieces, as well as the description, username, user's videos etc have now moved into small bars above and below the video and into nice drop-down menus for related functions like sharing, saving (to playlists and favourites only, no direct download of course), and author/user tools.

Overall, it's not a big change, and it could take a little getting used to, but it seems like a nice refresh. The prominence of related videos is a plus for YouTube and users alike. YouTube benefits from the longer-term stays encouraged by users who are quickly distracted by the myriad of related videos and therefore see more videos, more ads and spend more time on-site, all of which is an advantage for them. For the user, it means it is now easier to find not just what you wanted in the first place, but also other things which might interest us. Since they take up the whole bar, there is also less actual looking necessary, since the whole bar is videos, with less sponsored links, less ads in annoying places and more videos, in general.

Also, the old star rating system has been converted into a thumbs up/thumbs down system like the comments feature on the previous YouTube. This is combined with a cool new feature attached to the views counter. You can now get full statistics on a series of dimensions and parameters from Insight. You can get time graphs of the videos popularity from the click of a button which is neat little innovation from the boys at Google. Speaking of comments, you can still like/dislike comments like before but you can also use the @ tag to direct comments at specific users which seems to be popping up everywhere...

The Quicklist method of creating a quick playlist of videos without any hassle has been changed to the "Up Next Queue" and despite YouTube claiming that it's a new feature, it looks pretty much the same to me. What's not so obvious is that YouTube actually populates your Up Next Queue for you. If you arrived at the video through Search, then the search results form your Queue, or if it's a subscription, your other videos from subscriptions will form your Queue which seems to be a good way of finding videos but also a good way to waste a hell of a lot of time, especially since Autoplay (playing the next movie straight after the current one finishes) is on by default.

One unforeseen (at least for us) consequence is that the actual player has changed behind the scenes. The front end is exactly the same and the only thing that hints to me that something has changed is that navigating to the video on the website on an iPhone now shows a plugin icon, which has worked previously as a Youtube Video. However, the native YouTube app still functions perfectly so maybe it's just a coincidence. I will check the mobile YouTube site, but desktop no longer works. Also, trying to run videos through services like Zamzar (online video download/conversions) results in an error coming back every time, suggesting that something might have changed...

In the meantime, enjoy YouTube's new back to basics look and good luck finding all the old functions!!