YouTube Play is some artsy partnership between YouTube, HP and the Guggenheim Museum in New York that highlights 25 most creative YouTube videos in something called the Biennial of Creative Video. Apparently muy respected art world figures like Laurie Andersen, Takashi Murakami, Marilyn Minter, Stephan Sagmeister sifted through 23,000 submissions from all around the world and will reveal the winners at 8 p.m ET, 5 p.m. PST.
While this art stuff is great PR and street cred for aging hipster YouTube, the caliber of artists taking part is not the most amazing thing about YouTube Play. A visit to YouTube.com/play reveals a stunning custom Apple-like interface, where you can actually search for individual videos on a visually appealing video wall like with Cooliris or TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Gunzoo’s Fabric Video.
The buttons on the Play interface are also different, there are “Next,” “Previous,” and “Back” buttons and the ability to reload videos when you pause. The video sharing options are also streamlined on a bar below the video itself, with the added options to share and change country at the top right. Comments and video description have been moved to the video’s direct right. And I’m not even going to get into the quality of the content.
After playing around with Play, I have to agree with TechCrunch reader Deepak Vadgama when he asked, “Why can’t YouTube be what it is now?” The design sense and talent is definitely there, as evidenced by YouTube Play. Is this some kind of elaborate QA? I’ve emailed Google to see if YouTube Play is a sign of things to come, and will update this post as soon as I get more information.
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
YouTube provides a platform for you to create, connect and discover the world’s videos. The company recently redesigned the site around its hundreds of millions of channels. Partners from major movie studios, record labels, web original creators, viral stars, and millions more all have channels on YouTube. YouTube is predominantly an ad-supported platform, but also offers rental options for a growing number of movie titles. YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who...
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