Spiga

YouTube goes more viral, updates Insights too

YouTube changed its interface, mainly by adding the Statistics & Info tab but also by re-organizing the existing information. Also, now you are able to change the quality of the video you're watching from the Standard one to the High quality YouToube played around lately (if you don't see this button, add at the end of the YouTube video url &fmt=18, so for instance the url would look like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIxmi3e2Vmo&fmt=18):

As you can see, the Share tab is now the main one loaded offering you the option to easily submit it to Digg, Facebook, Myspace, ... It makes sense to be the first one loaded because they want popularity. Problem is with the Favorite tab, because if you are logged in and click it automatically the video will be added to the list of your Favorites without asking you for confirmation - which it should. Playlists, Flag - old things just moved around. The Statistics and Info tab now also shows more details, but basically is the same information that was provided before too: Honors, Ratings and Sites linking to this video.
The Commentary tab is also better organized, with comments split into Text and Video comments. Overall the changes are towards improved user interaction, except that Favorite tab that doesn't show a confirmation.

If you're an uploader, Youtube Insights was also updated. Now it shows a Discovery tab that shows you the Top Sources and the percentage of their referral importance:

2 comments:

Anonymous

4:00 PM

Ok, I just signed up to YouTube because I thought I needed to be a member to see the ''High Quality'' link. Well, even signing up, I still don't see the link!

Did I just create an account for nothing...???

GoodLe

4:25 AM

If you have an YouTube account go to Account->Video Playback Settings and you have 3 options there:

- Choose my video quality dynamically based on the current connection speed.
- I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video.
- I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it's available.

By default YouTube will choose the quality based on the detected connection, but if you want to see always the higher quality ones select the last option.

That option that I have in the screenshot seems to have been removed, it's possible that they're doing now this automatically based on this setting - or it might have been just a test and they'll include it by default in the future.