YouTube Personalizes Homepages (Screenshots Please?)
YouTube will be adding recommendations based on users’ and their friends’ activity. Previously the social networking features of the site had been oriented to avid creators, but now video watchers will also get the benefits of being part of a network.
A new personalized homepage layout featuring recommendations, friend activity, and a revised subscription list will be rolled out to “a small group of users chosen at random,” according to the YouTube blog.
None of us at NewTeeVee are part of the test group, but we’re trying to get ahold of screenshots. If you have access, send us a note.
The revised subscription list aspect of the revamp could be pretty interesting. Since very early on, YouTube has offered RSS feeds for external and internal consumption. Being such an avid video consumer, I have to hope…a full-featured video RSS reader? That would be sweet.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Liz – this looks interesting. Do you think YouTube is on the path of becoming a hyper-aggregator? Would they ever think of bringing outside RSS feeds in? How about video search across more than just YouTube?
BTW – you can already do all of these things at
http://www.mefeedia.com
Personalized home page, recommendations, friends activity, video search across 15,000 video websites – and manage all of your RSS subscriptions from around the Web (including indie web series, YouTube subscriptions, import iTunes podcasts, TV content feeds, and music from Imeem). We even give each user a personal RSS feed (Your Queue) that updates as each of your subscriptions update, so you don’t necessarily have to go to mefeedia.com to get your updates, you can put it in your player or feed reader of choice.