YouTube's Blog


Like What You See? Then Click-to-Buy on YouTube
When you view a YouTube video with a great soundtrack, you often see comments from YouTube users asking about the name of the song and where they can download it. Or when users watch the trailer for an upcoming video game, they want to know when it will be released and where they can buy it.

Today, we're taking our first steps to providing YouTube users with this kind of instant gratification, by adding "click-to-buy" links to the watch pages of thousands of YouTube partner videos. Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features. Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products -- like songs, books, and movies -- related to the content they're watching on the site. We're getting started by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly released video game Spore(TM) on videos from Electronic Arts.

This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube. Our vision is to help partners across all industries -- from music, to film, to print, to TV -- offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site.

These retail links are being gradually added to our library of music videos and are currently only available to users in the United States, but our goal is to slowly but surely expand the program to additional content and product partners, as well as our international users. We'll be experimenting with the UI over time to make sure this works for our community, and we'll continue to innovate based on your feedback. We're just getting started, so stay tuned for other innovative new features and product options soon.

Have fun,
The YouTube Team


Dubya Stars in The YouTube Screening Room
Two weeks ago, we announced Lionsgate's sponsorship of the YouTube Screening Room -- our platform for premium film content from around the world -- with a line-up of religious satires in honor of Bill Maher and Larry Charles' "Religulous", which opened in theaters today.

Now it's our great pleasure to bring you a round of films that examine the real lives of real people in conjunction with Oliver Stone's highly anticipated "W.", a biopic of the 43rd President of the United States, in theaters October 17.

In this line-up, you'll see the Academy Award-winning documentary, "Thoth", a chronicle of the life of S.K. Thoth, one of America's greatest street performers; "Heavy Metal Jr.", a hilarious and heartwarming documentary, nominated for a BAFTA, following the Irish heavy metal band, Hatred (and its 13-year-old members!), as they prepare for their first gig ever; "Peter and Ben", a touching documentary about the unbreakable bond between two 'black sheep,' which won the Aspen Shortsfest this year; and "Great White Hunters", winner of a Tropfest Comedy Award, about a group of friends who have made a hobby of hunting the world's greatest hunter.

Also, if you haven't done so already, be sure to submit your video to the "W." trailer mash-up contest, accepting entries through October 17.

Enjoy the films,
Sara P.
YouTube Film

Register to vote: Deadlines looming!
The U.S. presidential election is just over a month away, but you won't be able to exercise your right to vote on November 4 unless you've first registered to vote. And those deadlines are approaching fast - in many states, the deadline is next Monday, October 6.

How do you find out where to register? Google has created a great maps platform into which you can type in your home address and get information on where to register in your state - you can find it at maps.google.com/vote.

If you want to learn more about this easy-to-use platform, see this video made by our friends at Google, which we're currently featuring on the Worldwide homepage. We're also featuring two more voter registration videos -- one was shot by Leonardo DiCaprio and friends, especially for the Google Maps platform launch, and the second comes from YouTube's own Citizen Kate, who participated in the "Voter Vlog Tag" project, a YouTube community project started by JoeFelice that aims to get YouTubers to tag each other with the task of getting their friends to register to vote.




Keep your eyes peeled for the creative ways YouTube users are utilizing the site to encourage you to vote, and make sure to get out and register NOW on Google's new platform! And as always, stay on top of the latest election news directly from the candidates on our You Choose '08 platform.

Yours,
Steve G.
YouTube News & Politics

YouTube Comes Alive With YouTube Live
Today we announced YouTube Live, a celebration of the vibrant communities that exist on the site, to be held on November 22 in San Francisco and streamed for a potential worldwide audience of millions.

YouTube users have been gathering informally for years, but this is the first time that YouTube is officially leaping off screens for an event unlike any other. With live performances, celebrity guests, original videos, surprise collaborations and much more, the event will mix elements of a concert, variety show and party, with YouTube phenomena always at the core. Here's a idea of what to expect:



Go to www.youtube.com/live for all the latest news on the event, including a list of who's already onboard to appear, and to take our survey, which is your chance to tell us what you would expect from an event like this. (You can also leave a comment below or on the video above, or post a video response to that clip.) The channel will also contain information on how to apply for tickets to attend the event in San Francisco.

You'll be hearing from us a lot more about YouTube Live between now and November 22, so stay tuned to our channel, this blog and, naturally, the videos on the site talking about the event. Finally, we'd like to thank sponsors Activision, Lionsgate and Virgin America for helping to make YouTube Live possible.

Yours,
The YouTube Team

Your Video Second-by-Second
YouTube Insight has helped you learn more about your YouTube videos, enabling you to establish when and where your videos prove popular. But what if you could learn not just which of your videos are hot on the site, but which specific parts of those videos are hotter than others? What if you could know exactly when viewers tend to leave your videos, or which scenes within a video they watch again and again?

Happily, this information is now available to all YouTube video uploaders via an innovative new feature for Insight called "Hot Spots." The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. We determine "hot" and "cold" spots by comparing your video's abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards. So what does that mean? Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and people may be rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content's gone cold: viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.

Here's an example of Hot Spots in action, based on a video of YouTube employee Michael Rucker making like Soulja Boy:



You can see that many viewers are not initially impressed with Rucker's efforts; they're leaving the video at a faster than average rate almost immediately after the video begins. But the longer the video plays, the more people tend to stay, generating a hot spot at the end of the video. Better late than never.

We think you'll find Hot Spots useful in several ways. For example, you can figure out which scenes in your videos are the "hottest" and edit them accordingly, or insert annotations at key moments to keep your audience more engaged. Now that Insight shows what parts of videos viewers are watching and skipping, you'll no longer have to guess why people watch your work – you'll know. You can find this new feature under the "Hot Spots" tab within the Insight dashboard (you must be logged in to your YouTube account).

As with all of Insight's features, we learn about the most creative examples from you. Are you using Insight in a new and interesting way? Upload a video to YouTube and let us know.

Have fun,
The YouTube Team