YouTube Gets Personal
February 29th, 2008
YouTube launched a new beta this week, which allows you to customize your homepage. It still has the same look and feel, but allows you to move the modules around on the page, so you can keep what is most important on top where you want it. I have two favorite modules I can now keep on top.
The first is recommendations, in which YouTube provides you an algorithmically-selected set of videos based on your viewing history. I personally find to think this is too scientific. I like to think magical fairies watch the videos I liked in the past and then pull videos off the shelf to upload them to my homepage. It just sounds warmer.
The second is subscriptions. I subscribe to all things Marie Digby. She is an amazing singer I am stalking, so I like to know what she has done in an instant. Is stalking illegal?
The goal with all of this is to gauge people’s interest in having a YouTube
What I like best about the beta is that YouTube, along with many other social networking sites, has accepted that everyone is an individual and cannot create a single homepage for all users. Everyone interacts with a social networking sites differently, so why not let us decide where we want each module. This way, we can click and scroll less. A win/win. We set up the homepage the way we like and we spend more time on YouTube.
Check out the beta by clicking this link.
2 Responses to “YouTube Gets Personal”
By Travis Reynolds on Feb 29, 2008 | Reply
I think I am going to have to try this out, I love youtube. I’ve seen over 3000 videos =]
By Tom Whittaker on Feb 29, 2008 | Reply
Travis – It is worth it, plus it is nice to just have control of the page. Have fun.