Rene’s Top Five on YouTube: August 3, 2023 Edition
Aug 03, 2023 – minute read
Hi, I’m Rene Ritchie, your currently vacationing YouTube Creator Liaison! Normally, I spend half my time helping advocate for creators inside YouTube and, the other half, helping explain YouTube to creators. Also, scouring X(twitter) and social, to bring you some of the more interesting and impactful happenings on-platform and in the creator space. But, since I’m out-of-office this week, I’m doing something a bit different — catching us all up and some of the biggest, broadest news of the whole entire summer! Let’s go!
🎤 YouTube can absolutely feel like a mystery box at times, which can be both challenging and stressful. To help give creators a better look inside that YouTube box, I’ve been interviewing the people who run some of our most important products and policies. That includes Todd Beaupré on the Algorithm, David Rosenstein on Creator Music, and Matt Halprin on Community Guidelines, with more to come! Click for those, sub for Conor’s Ad-Friendly Guidelines update as well!
👍 It’s not a dream. It’s not an illusion. It’s not a robot doppelganger clone from a parallel-but-slightly-better Earth — A/B testing is really, truly coming to YouTube! Early testing will start later this year with rollout coming next year. Creators will be able to choose three thumbnails, start a test, and find out which one results in the most watch time (which reflects both click-through and retention). Our VP of Creator Product, Amjad Hanif, announced the Mount Everest-highly requested feature at VidCon Anaheim 2023, and we have a teaser up if you want to see how the test version will look. (And yes, the teaser used Test and Compre for the thumbnail!)
🩳 Turning our attention to high-demand features that are shipping now, now, now — as part of the mobile workflow, you can finally select a custom frame from your Short to act as the thumbnail on the Shorts Shelf, Shorts Tab, and Search. Also, when you’re watching Shorts that are over 30 seconds long on mobile, you can now tap and drag the timeline to scrub back and forth, just like on long-form videos. (YouTube has even added new Analytics to Studio so you can see how your audience engages with Shorts vs. long-form vs. Live!) So. Good!
❤️ One of the things I love most about YouTube is how engaged the people who run the company are with the creators who fuel it. From CEO Neal giving a piggyback ride to Airrack or taking on Safiya in a Boba Battle, to VP of Engineering Scott… boxing Michelle Khare?! to Mary Ellen making Adam W’s Diamond Play Button dreams come true.
🛍️ Live Shopping is terrific way to recommend the best products to your audience, matching what you love with the community that loves you — in real time! It’s such a compelling format, it’s growing in popularity around the world, and if you haven’t tried it yet, we’ve got a whole series of videos for you on getting started, setting up your shop, planning and promoting your streams, and making the most of the replay!
I’ll be back next week, so get with the contenting!