More love for playlists and a new look for YouTube

The way you watch YouTube keeps changing, so we’re making a few tweaks to YouTube to keep up with you. Starting today you’ll see some changes to make it easier to find what you want to watch on YouTube and collect playlists to watch again and again.

Like a playlist, watch it from anywhere

Want to quickly find your playlists or save Aloe Blacc’s favorite music videos playlist? Your guide now has all of the playlists that you created, as well as playlists from other channels you liked. If you make a playlist, you’ll also see a new page that makes editing easier. And if you’re looking for new playlists to check out from your favorite channels, check out the new playlist tab on a channel like this one from YouTube Nation.

We moved!

YouTube now has a center-aligned look, fitting neatly on any screen size, and feeling similar to the mobile apps you’re spending almost half your YouTube time with. You can quickly flip between what’s recommended and popular in “What to Watch” like Postmodern Jukebox’s Timber, and the latest from your subscribed channels like iamOTHER in “My Subscriptions,” with both options now front and center. Click the guide icon to the right of the YouTube logo at any time to see your playlists, subscriptions and more.



To learn more, please visit the Help Center.

Yining Zhao, Web Developer, recently watched “18 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read”

Keeping YouTube Views Authentic

YouTube isn’t just a place for videos, it’s a place for meaningful human interaction. Whether it’s views, likes, or comments, these interactions both represent and inform how creators connect with their audience. That’s why we take the accuracy of these interactions very seriously. When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.

As part of our long-standing effort to keep YouTube authentic and full of meaningful interactions, we’ve begun periodically auditing the views a video has received. While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count, removing fraudulent views as new evidence comes to light. We don’t expect this approach to affect more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube, but we believe it’s crucial to improving the accuracy of view counts and maintaining the trust of our fans and creators.

As YouTube creators, we ask you to be extra careful when working with third-party marketing firms; unfortunately some of them will sell you fake views. If you need help promoting your video, please review our posts about working with third party view service providers and increasing YouTube views.

Four tips for fostering discussion from YouTube’s top teachers

On YouTube, engaging with your community helps bring viewers closer to your content and enables two-way discussions. There are great ways you can interact with your fans and keep it manageable, even when your audience is large. Here are four strategies that some of YouTube's most popular education channels use to push the boundaries of fan interaction.

1. Crowdsource a hypothesis

Before revealing the answer to a science experiment, Derek from Veritasium asked his fans to draw their own conclusions via video response. He addressed some of these responses in his next video, using them to represent the most common explanations reached by his viewers. You can see a quick recap of the experiment and some of the video responses from fans here:



2. Ask in advance

Many of the top education channels have been hosting intensive Q&As with their audience. In addition to answering questions in real-time through a livestream or Google Hangout, some creators solicit questions ahead of time, choose their favorites, and create content with their answers. Here CGPgrey uses his trademark animation style to answer his fans’ questions:




3. Feature viewer generated content

On their channel WeSauce, the hosts of Vsauce feature content created entirely by their audience. They have a variation of their popular Vsauce2 show BiDiPi (Build It, Draw it, Play it) called “Your BiDiPi”, which is dedicated solely to their audience’s work:



4. Build interactivity into the format

At the end of their current week’s video, the PBS Idea Channel features comments from their prior week’s episode. The host of the show, Mike Rugnetta summarizes each comment, highlights relevant points, and adds his own analysis. Building this interactive element into the format of the show encourages community discussion, and makes fans feel that their comments will actually be read. Here’s an example:



Here is Mike stating that he reads every comment and explaining what makes for a good comment:



It’s important to try new and inventive ways to keep your fans engaged and feeling like they are part of a community. For more information on building your community, check out our Creator Playbook.

Jeremy Kaye and Devin McNulty are watching Imperial Pants

Meet ActiveMelody: Your January On The Rise featured partner!

Congratulations to Brian Sherrill of ActiveMelody, our featured “On The Rise” partner for this month. You’ll see his channel and videos in the spotlight on the On The Rise homepage and then YouTube Spotlight channel today.

Brian is a music professional that has taken his passion for guitar online to help aspiring musicians. His expertise spans from Rockabilly to SRV and Delta acoustic blues. On YouTube, Brian goes one step further, uploading tutorials to share his experience and knowledge with fellow guitarists. It doesn’t matter which video you choose to watch; you’ll be impressed with Brian’s talent and dedication to sharing his knowledge with his viewers.



Here are a few words from Brian:

One afternoon, while sitting on the front porch playing the guitar, it dawned on me that I should share my love for playing blues guitar by creating how-to videos that provide a detailed look at the many nuances that most seasoned guitar players take for granted, and share them on YouTube. I launched my first guitar lesson video on YouTube back in spring of 2009 with a great amount of angst. At present, I release a new, detailed guitar lesson each Friday so come check out the ActiveMelody channel on YouTube if you enjoy learning new things on the guitar. I’m honored to be YouTube’s January On The Rise channel and would like to thank all of my subscribers and those who voted for the opportunity.

If you’ve enjoyed this monthly blog series and are interested in learning more or participating, we encourage you to visit our On The Rise homepage. You can check out all of our past featured partners on the Featured Partners tab.

Christine Wang and Kathryn Sahr, YouTube Partner Team, recently watched “The Query - Breeze.”

Four tips on making shareable short films

How do you make a short film so amazing that you immediately need to share it with your friends? Here’s four tips from some of the best in the game on YouTube.

Be remarkable
Casey Neistat’s film “The Dark Side of the iPhone 5S Lines” provides a glimpse into an often unseen side of our cultural obsession with technology. Its documentary style tells a complete story in six minutes, and its surprising climax leaves viewers with a powerful image that makes them want to click the share button.




Find your niche
The film “Portal: Survive! (Live-Action Short)” is a film based on the popular video game Portal, and it taps into the game’s sizeable fanbase for viewers. In the comments section fans of Portal quote their favorite lines, engage in passionate debate about the game, and ask for more Portal based films. Given that over 4 million copies of this game have been sold to date, this niche audience is quite large.



Relate to your audience
The short film “I Forgot My Phone” identifies a phenomenon in our society and handles it in a way that resonates with many viewers. When a film encapsulates something viewers feel from their own life experience, they want to share it and say something about it. What do you think people would write when posting this video to social media?



Be topical
For their film “3D Printed Guns (Documentary)”, Vice took the controversial topic of gun control and paired it with the trending new technology, 3D printing. The information contained in this film called into question the meaning of gun control, and they released their film right as this issue was at the zenith of our cultural conversation.



As we can see from these films, choosing the right topic is an integral part of making your film shareable. For more information on creating content that will captivate your audience, check out our Creator Playbook.

Jeremy Kaye and Devin McNulty, Programming Strategy, recently watched “Arnold Works at Gold's.”

Comments page brings your comments in one place

Many of you have told us that you use your YouTube Inbox to manage comments. With the new commenting system moving comment notices to alerts, removing this feature was, well, a bummer.

Staying connected with your audience is critical on YouTube, so we fast-tracked the development of a new comment management page that lets you see, respond to and moderate your comments all in one place. Go to youtube.com/comments to check it out.

From this central page you can easily remove comments, flag comments for spam or abuse, give a thumbs up, or click over to the video watch page and reply. Quickly toggle between comments that are published on the channel, comments that are pending channel manager approval, or comments that have been marked as spam.

You’ll see this page updated soon with more features such as replying inline or expanding all replies.

Patrick Doyle, Engineer, recently watched Dr. John McDougall, "The Starch Solution".

Meet Your January On The Rise Nominees

In our monthly On The Rise program, we identify four partners whose channels drive significant YouTube watch time but haven’t yet reached the 100,000 subscriber mark. With your help, we’re sharing with you four dedicated partners who’d like your help to jumpstart their audience development and channel growth. In January, we’re excited to introduce you to partners whose content covers the worlds of music, origami, technology and graphic novels.

Here’s where you come in--you actually have the chance to help push these partners even further on YouTube. Review their videos below, vote for your favorite here by selecting the blue checkmark next to the channel name, and one of these candidates will have the opportunity to be featured across YouTube later this month. In addition to your votes, each channel will be evaluated on criteria such as viewer engagement and channel optimization techniques to decide which partner we’ll feature.

In past months, featured On The Rise partners like wranglerstar and Buzz60 have gained many subscribers and seen their careers take off, in large part due to your support. This month’s poll will be open until January 13, 5 p.m. PT, so don’t forget to vote for your favorite channel. Check back to see which channel will be featured on January 30.

THINKAbouttheINK
If you are ever interested in the fast-paced and exciting world of comic books and graphic novels, THINKAbouttheINK is the channel for you. With discussions about upcoming releases and reviews on the movie versions of classic comics, THINKAbouttheINK has been featured on Bleeding Cool, a comic book news site, and puts out new videos every week so you never miss a beat!



happypuppytruffles
Feeling crafty? This channel will help inspire you with a new origami project every day as well as free origami paper that you can print and use to make everything from origami animals to pop-up cards and gift card envelopes.



activemelody

Brian has been playing the guitar for more than 20 years and shares his passion for music via tutorials on his channel. If you play the guitar or just like listening, go check out his channel for lessons based on the blues, jazz, and country.



ThatSnazzyiPhoneGuy

Not sure which new smartphone to buy or if the newest laptop is really the best on the market? ThatSnazzyiPhoneGuy features all things technology-related. Quinn gives his thoughts and insights about new products, how they function and look. You can look forward to new videos every month to ensure that you are informed about everything tech.



If you’re interested in participating or have suggestions for partners you think should be featured, we encourage you to visit our On The Rise homepage. You can check out all of our past featured partners on the Featured Partners tab, or nominate a YouTube partner to be considered for the program on the Nominate tab. Feel free to submit nominations for your own channel, or for channels you follow that you think deserve more attention, or could be the next YouTube sensation. We’ll continue to feature promising partners who drive YouTube watch time, have fewer than 100,000 subscribers, and produce engaging content on a regular basis.

Kathryn Sahr and Christine Wang, YouTube Partner Support, recently watched “Top 10 NBA Dunks of 2013.”