YouTube Cofounder Discusses Site’s Future

As big and popular as it is, YouTube could probably engage cruise control (in terms of feature releases, design updates, and so forth) and stay in front of the video-sharing competition for at least a couple of years.  Cofounder Chad Hurley was interviewed onstage at LeWeb '09, and that isn't at all what he has in mind, however.

Reducing the amount of time it takes to find something other than a song you don't like or an annoying kid is one priority.  "What we're very focused on right now is content discovery technology and how to make the finding great videos easier for users, based on their profile and past usage," said Hurley according to Robin Wauters.

Also, Hurley continued, "We're pleased with the mobile content consumption side of the equation, but I'll be the first to acknowledge that we need to work on making uploading through mobile devices far better."

As for what won't get a lot of attention, it doesn't look like live video is going to be a big focus.  Hurley spoke about it in uncertain terms, only allowing for the possibility of once-a-month live streaming events in the near future.  And social features won't come flying out of the woodwork, either.

So look for a smarter and more accessible YouTube to evolve over time.  Just don't count on seeing any completely new stuff popping up soon.

Have You Read This?

> YouTube Unveils Video Targeting Tool

> YouTube Wraps Up Another Content-Sharing Deal

> YouTube Gets Faster With "Feather" Beta

New Google Home Page: Does it Remove or Add Distraction?

Google has launched its new homepage, which looks generally the same, but removes everything but the logo, search box, and two buttons until the user moves the mouse. Google says most people go to the Google home page to search, and they wanted to remove the other distractions, unless users specifically want to see them.

This is an interesting philosophy, because it certainly grabs your attention when you move the mouse and and a bunch of new stuff appears. Perhaps, the move is really designed to draw attention to Google's other services.

"Since most users who are interested in clicking over to a different application generally do move the mouse when they arrive, the 'fade in' is an elegant solution that provides options to those who want them, but removes distractions for the user intent on searching," Google says.

Google has been testing similar designs for several months. The company explains:

All in all, we ran approximately 10 variants of the fade-in. Some of the experiments hindered the user experience: for example, the variants of the homepage that hid the search buttons until after the fade performed the worst in terms of user happiness metrics. Other variants of the experiment produced humorous outcomes when combined with our doodles — the barcode doodle combined with the fade was particularly ironic in its overstated minimalism . However, in the end, the variant of the homepage we are launching today was positive or neutral on all key metrics, except one: time to first action. At first, this worried us a bit: Google is all about getting you where you are going faster — how could we launch something that potentially slowed users down? Then, we realized: we want users to notice this change... and it does take time to notice something (though in this case, only milliseconds!). Our goal then became to understand whether or not over time the users began to use the homepage even more efficiently than the control group and, sure enough, that was the trend we observed.

Judging from conversation on Twitter, opinions of the new page are pretty evenly mixed. Some think it's "snazzy," while others feel it's distracting." Some don't like that you have to move the mouse to know where specific links are.

As with any design change to a popular site, there are going to be critics and supporters. The Google home page affects a great deal of web users. What is your opinion of the new change? Share your thoughts.

Have You Read This?

> Google Testing a Revamp of the Search Results Page

> Facebook Tests "Many" New Design Changes

> Microsoft Unveils Big Redesign of MSN

Microsoft Takes Users Behind Bing

Microsoft has launched a new site for Bing, where users can go to find out the latest features that have been implemented into the search engine (excuse me, "decision engine"). The site's called Behind Bing.

"You can see each feature in action though a screencast, see me talk about why we did it the way we did (for those who like to geek out), and get some drill-down details," says Bing's Stefan Weitz. "For those of you pressed for time, check out 'Features for You' at the bottom of the site which highlights some features that I thought were especially cool depending on what and where you are."

Highlighted on the site currently are sections looking at:

- Real-time search
- Bing Local
- Weather/Event results
- Enhanced Results
- Enhanced hover
- Bing for mobile
- Videos
- Bing Travel
- Bing Health
- Visual Search
- Bing Shopping
- Wolfram Alpha
- Search Sharing
- Reference

There are videos and other sections for "explore," "overview," and "insight guide." If you don't regularly keep up with Bing's announcements or search news in general, this should serve as a good place to check out from time to time just to see what the search engine has been up to, and to stay informed about any functionalities that you may have otherwise missed. That will of course require that Microsoft keeps it updated. 

On a related note, all of the features that Bing announced last week are supposed to be "100%" live now for all users, but that doesn't seem to be accurate, as I am not able to access some of the new stuff yet.

Have You Read This?

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> Yahoo and Microsoft May Be Close to Signing

> Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts on Publisher Searches

Hulu Weighing Password Walls For Sake Of Cable Companies

As fans of "The Riches" may know, Hulu's made would-be users sign in to see certain shows for quite a while now; the measure's meant to protect children from mature content.  But passwords may prove to be a key in the process of bringing a lot of new stuff to Hulu, too.

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar intends to help cable companies solve a significant problem: although they've been understandably leery to give away their premium content for free online, they can't afford to turn away from the Web.  And it wouldn't be smart of them to lock everything up on a series of single-purpose, otherwise-ignored sites.

So as Julia Boorstin reported after speaking with Kilar, "Hulu would also like to be the destination for password-protected cable content just as it is the go-to-site for the content from the first couple of numbers on the TV dial."

Boorstin then noted that this isn't at all farfetched, continuing, "When Time Warner Cable announced its test of a 'TV Everywhere' concept that will allow subscribers to access content on demand, online, it made it clear that Hulu could be one destination for subscribers to plug in their passwords and access those shows."

Unfortunately, no specific timeframes or deal terms were discussed.