Brand News #10
YouTube is an American video platform based out in California that facilitates video sharing/ viewing mostly for free. The platform that was started by three former PayPal employees in 2005 was bought by Google in 2006.
YouTube is all about uploading, viewing, rating and sharing videos. Users can also subscribe to channels and comment on videos. Apart from individual channels, YouTube also has partnerships with media corporations for airing/ streaming and watching their programs. Based on latest reports, it is estimated that about 400 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute and 1 Billion hours of content are watched on it everyday.
YouTube provides free video viewing service, subscription based premium channels, film rentals and an ad-free service by the name of YouTube Red. As per Alexa rankings (a web traffic analyst company), YouTube is ranked No. 2 in terms of web traffic.
Over the years, YouTube has tried to bring in more features to make it contemporary and in-line with the changing user preferences. Offline mode and YouTube Live are some of those features.
But YouTube is not stopping at that and want to go the extra yard! They have introduced the following features to make the experience more immersive,
1. Dark Mode: This is purely for the viewership experience which adds a dark tint on to the background screen of YouTube which is dubbed to reduce the stress on eyes. However, there are no dedicated buttons to turn it on and off. Then how do you go about doing it? Well, its accomplished by double tapping on a video screen just above the play/ pause button when in the landscape mode.
2. Flash News: After adding the trending page, YouTube had gone on to introduce the breaking/ flash news section to provide updates on recent news stories. Such videos will show on the horizontal scroll on the home page by default. This feature is being rolled out in a phased manner geographically and on the basis of platforms such as android/ ios.
3. Integrated Chat: This is meant to make users stay longer on YouTube. Its a simple add-on wherein the user can chat with their Google contacts without actually switching pages. Users can also create groups by adding more participants to an ongoing chat.
With the likes of related platforms such as Facebook giving more importance to video feeds, the case of YouTube going all out and adding new features on a continuing basis is a classic example of a brand trying to stay on top of its game by constantly reinventing itself.
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