From my Comedy YouTube channel
Draw My Life
A white board drawing of my personal journey»What’s your favorite new YouTube feature?
written by JoshRimer.com on January 29th, 2012
2011 was an eventful year for YouTube and I’m sure 2012 will also be amazing for the 2nd largest search engine and 3rd most visited website on the internet.
Here are some of the cool things that were added to YouTube’s growing list of features last year:
1. Live streaming
YouTube finally jumped in on the bandwagon to cater to the growing demand for livestreaming. Live streaming on YouTube had a dedicated page where people could see ongoing broadcasts as well as clips to broadcasts they’ve missed. Not all accounts have been enabled for live streaming, but most of the top YouTube accounts are now enabled.
2. Video editing
YouTube rolled out an improved video-editing tool which content creators can use to edit their already uploaded videos without changing the IDs and starting over. Their stabilization feature is really good – I used it on a vlog shot on my iPhone for the AGayCollab channel when I was in Mexico and it made it look surprisingly smooth compared to the original.
3. Partnerships
2011 saw more YouTube partnerships between YouTube and content creators – it went from around 10,000 of us being full Partners to over 15,000. Many other accounts were offered full monetization privileges (without being full Partners) ,while others still were offered monetization on individual videos that were performing well.
4. YouTube Slam and Google + 1 Hangouts
YouTube introduced a new feature called YouTube Slam which allowed YouTubers to choose the next viral video that will be featured on YouTube’s homepage. YouTube also integrated its platform with Google+1, allowing users to hang out online with friends and watch videos together in real time.
5. A more intuitive algorithm
The introduction of Google Instant paved the way for a more improved search function on YouTube that filtered results according to relevance and relation to the videos you usually watch. The homepage also applied the same principle by automatically featuring videos that might interest you.
YouTubers who violated copyright rules on YouTube were given a chance to clear their name by enrolling in what was called the YouTube Copyright School. The campaign featured characters from Happy Tree Friends which educated YouTubers about Fair Use and copyright rules in a series of videos.
Those are six cool things that YouTube added to their feature-packed service last year. Can you think of some others? I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us this year!
Facebook Comments:
I think it’s great that YouTube continues to grow and adapt with the times. I really like the copyright school idea, because it lets people atone for their mistakes if they accidentally violate YouTube’s extensive copyright rules. It’s also cool that they simplified the submission process by letting you edit the videos on YouTube itself. I’m excited to see what they unveil next!
I’ve only uploaded a few videos, literally only two or three to Youtube for my project site – bikiniwaxvideo.org – but what has really been holding me back from uploading more is that fact that, honestly, I’m not great at editing them at all. The fact that Youtube now have a user-friendly video-editing tool I’m certain that my output will go through the roof from now on! Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Josh!
Anita x
It’s not necessarily a new feature but i definately love the ability to embed youtube videos in your own website, saves massive ammounts of bandwidth as you don’t have to host videos on your own site anymore.