New TV-style channels for YouTube

YouTube unveiled a major redesign that showcases television-style channels and promises slicker integration with other Google online properties.

“We are trying hard to marry the best of TV and the best of online,” YouTube vice president of product development Shishir Mehrotra said while providing an early glimpse of the changes at the company’s offices in San Bruno.

“The term ‘online video’ is about to disappear as video becomes available to every device,” Mehrotra said. To demonstrate the point, group product manager Shiva Rajaraman demonstrated a YouTube application that makes the website’s videos viewable on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 videogame consoles connected to the internet.

The new YouTube home page features channels created by anyone from self-styled video lovers to professional television or movie studios.

A side panel provides YouTube users easy tools to find channels tailored to interests and then “pin” favourites to stay tuned into new offerings.

YouTube provides recommendations based on videos people watch or like.

“The layout is a lot easier on the eyes and the feed is pretty awesome,” said DeStorm Power, a singer and songwriter who has risen to stardom on YouTube, where his channel has more than 1.16 million subscribers.

New YouTube pages makes it easy to synch channel updates to subscribers’ Twitter, Facebook or Google+ social network accounts, he noted.

“Being able to take my career into my own hands and build the kind of following I have on YouTube has been amazing,” DeStorm said while showing off a new page layout that put fresh works centre stage.

The Google-owned service built in templates that can be used by video makers or people who create channels centred on what they consider worth watching.

YouTube even changed its well-known logo to be more modern and closer in style to those used at other Google services.

The redesign is being rolled out with an eye toward making YouTube look and work better on all Internet-linked devices from smartphones and tablets to television sets.

The home page lets people switch channels television-style instead of hunting for video clip after clip. The new design sets the stage for film or television studios to create pay channels, a step that YouTube declined to dismiss or discuss.

YouTube is also dabbling with a new revenue model in which viewers get can skip ads, and advertisers only pay for promotional snippets people watched.

The service is testing “True View” advertising inspired by a trend toward ad clips being among top-watched videos.

While YouTube is clearly the most popular application on Google television the video-sharing service is intent on being available on the full array of platforms and hardware including videogame consoles, smart television sets and smartphones.