YouTube Absorbed By Corporate Machinery: The Amateur-Video Pioneer Begins Transition

[democracy1st]

YouTube Absorbed By Corporate Machinery: The Amateur-Video Pioneer Begins Transition to Hollywood Vehicle

YouTube will soon unveil a redesign that clearly separates its premium and long-form programming from the user-posted videos that account for most of its activity. According to two sources familiar with Google's plans for YouTube, the new design will do away with the current navigation scheme — which funnels users into "videos," "channels," and "community" categories. That layout will be replaced with a tabbed navigation with clearly defined sections for professional content, ClickZ reports.

The new design will offer four tabs: Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. The first three tabs will display premium shows, clips, and movies from Google's network and studio partners, all of which will be monetized with in-stream advertising. Meanwhile the Videos channel will house amateur and semi-pro content of the sort major brand advertisers have shied away from. "They're putting up walls between all the UGC stuff, which will live within the video channel,...and the brand safe content," said one senior agency exec who was briefed on YouTube's plans, reports ClickZ writer Zachary Rodgers.

The redesign also touches YouTube's video player. The new player interface closely resembles the video experience on Hulu, the video portal that's grown by leaps and bounds since its launch last year. Like Hulu, the new video player displays visual markers in places where ads are scheduled to play. Also like Hulu, the YouTube player allows users to "dim the lights," reducing the brightness of screen real estate outside the video frame. "It's totally a Hulu approach, but that's best practices right now," the exec told ClickZ.

The planned launch date for the overhauled site is April 16. According to sources, the original plan was to roll it out next week, but YouTube pushed the date back for unknown reasons. YouTube has been pitching launch packages to agencies for approximately six weeks.
http://bulldogreporter.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=2436B6EB9392483ABB0A373E8B823A24&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&AudID=213D92F8BE0D4A1BB62EB3DF18FCCC68&tier=4&id=DE34D872ABB34F55B647B20734E9B12B

[PM Martin]

1. They are not going to throw the amatuer users off, are they?

[DCKit]

2. I guess Google just wasted a buttload of cash.

If they had such different ideas on what YouTube should be, they should have just done it and called it by another name. BoobTube seems appropriate, given the description.

[democracy1st]

3. they're caving in to cut off potential lawsuits

[Reform]

4. Seems like.................

Its just a way to promote holly wood and msm and to diminish the real youtube experiance.
If they mess with things that bad people will leave, i know its been said before but this sounds like their going to really mess with the entire platform, look and feel of youtube, people don't like drastic changes such as this they like repetativeness and familiar enviroments.
It sounds like its going to be alot different.
Looks like it will be made harder to be heard and seen, and from what ive been able to tell over my years on youtube this is what tubers want.
Time will tell i suppose we will know shortly.
CEOTube is smelling awfully rotten

[Merlot]

5. google just took the youtube videos out of adsense program

said they weren't profitable, which I was having a hard time believing. I guess this explains why they changed it.

[LooseWilly]

6. Google did pay a buttload of cash to acquire YouTube...

so the idea of them wanting to turn it into a revenue generating "vehicle" isn't surprising... business models, if I'm not mistaken, require it.

And the people who developed YouTube in the first place were happy to sell it for millions... and a friend of mine who is friends with those who developed YouTube assures me of this. From what my friend says, YouTube was first "thought up" because some ex-PayPal-ers were angry that they couldn't see clips of video of Janet Jackson's "boob malfunction" online... and they decided that such things should be available on the internet. So they made it so... and it was so popular that Google decided to acquire it.

It's all "Amalgamation and Capital" as far as I can tell...

[Joe the Liberal]

7. Not surprising..........

I knew Youtube would eventually kneel down and suck the corporate cock. Pretty soon it just won't be the same, hopefully someone will put up a site similar to what Youtube was before they sold out.

[lostnfound]

8. When 'sidewalk.com' got taken over and remade as 'citysearch' sites

The old 'sidewalk.com' sites were great for knowing what was happening in your city (if you were in a metro area) on a weekend, including fun stuff at parks or indy events or offbeat places, and very grassroots. I could always find something. Now, anytime I go on citysearch I hate the whole experience; only the big commercial venues get a front-and-center look, and I can never find any personality showing through.

[SoCalDem]

9. and a "new" you-tube-ish venue will pop up.. n.t