YouTube is in the social media news vault twice over today. On one hand it announced a redesign of its Masthead while on the other a research found that kids on Twitter query for YouTube videos the most. Among other things it signifies the growing demand for rich media content on the web and augurs well for multimedia publishers.
You may notice something looks a little different about our masthead (top navigational area on the homepage) today, and that’s because we’ve done a bit of housecleaning. We’ve streamlined and simplified the design to focus on the primary experience of YouTube – stated the YouTube blog.
Instead of the clustered look which put together one’s subscription, history along with currently watched and popular videos, YouTube has now separated them. The header is also cleaned up by pushing the search bar above and with the logo and signups sections. The most popular videos are now categorized into sections like entertainment, news, etc. (I am not sure if this was the case earlier).
Essentially the highlight is on finding new videos and more engagement therefore, while helping you keep your experience organized by safely putting user’s data on the sidebar.
Twitter Search Queries
The other bit of news of course is a research carried out by Symantec on what’re the most popular keywords queried by kids on Twitter. According to them, Popular items in the list include some expected entries like YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace as well as queries for popular pop idols like Michael Jackson and Miley Cyrus.
Interestingly YouTube scored the most points finding itself not in one but 4 different position because fo search terms variance.
YouTube actually ended up in three spots. Not only was the query “YouTube” the number one search term, it also landed spots 11 and 12 with “You Tube” and “YouTube.com” respectively. Actually, YouTube also earned spot #9 as well, if you count the query for “Fred,” a popular fictional character whose YouTube channel is a current big hit with kids. (source)
This further validates perhaps the point that multimedia and rich media content might be the most sought after form of web publishing online. At the same time, it also shows that it’s not just videos or video based content that the future of the web might be looking at, rather the high level of branding that YouTube has achieved showcases the ened for video/rich media publishers to choose new niches. So if you are a portal head who thinks alright kids search for YouTube quite a lot and so I need a video space on my site then you are probably headed in the wrong direction.
Anyway, the Top 10 Searches Were:
1. YouTube
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. Sex
5. MySpace
6. Porn
7. Yahoo
8. Michael Jackson
9. Fred
10. eBay
