YouTube Highlights 2/3/2011

This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

Since our last update, we’ve connected you with the U.S. President via an exclusive YouTube interview, brought the Sundance Film Festival to your virtual door and launched a new homepage that’s personalized to your interests.

YouTube World View kicks off
For the second year in a row, President Obama sat down with YouTube for his first interview after the State of the Union speech. The President took the opportunity to respond to the protests in Egypt, address concerns on jobs, debt and health care, and to answer a series of more personal questions that you submitted in video and text via YouTube.

This interview marks the beginning of the YouTube World View program, a series of interviews that will let you ask important questions of public leaders and big thinkers from around the world.



U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner will be doing a YouTube Interview soon, so stay tuned for more news on how to participate.

“Life in a Day” premiered at Sundance
We premiered the world’s largest user-generated documentary “Life in a Day” last week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. After months of hard work, Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald and a team of editors created a 90-minute documentary film based on thousands of videos uploaded from around the world on a single day—July 24, 2010. The film will be distributed in the U.S. on the one-year anniversary of that date and available on YouTube at the same time. Between now and then, “Life in a Day” will play at film festivals worldwide and international distribution deals will be put in place in other regions.

YouTube and the Sundance Film Institute also teamed up to bring you a collection of past and present short films in the YouTube Screening Room.

The Onion’s A.V. Club “Inventory” lists comes to YouTube
The Onion’s sister publication the A.V. Club debuted a new video series on YouTube called “Inventory,” based on the popular lists that catalog the unconventional—everything from the “19 artists who dramatically reinvented themselves after their early work” to “25 songs about outdated (and soon-to-be outdated) technology.”

YouTube partner Josh Sundquist is January’s “On the Rise” star
Our congratulations to Josh Sundquist, who edged past Luke Conard in the final hours to win this month’s edition of On the Rise, a program in which you decide who gets featured on the YouTube homepage based on a shortlist of channels that have experienced fast growth in the last month.

The “Bobee?” Track this and other trends
Each weekday, YouTube Trends takes a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We comb through YouTube's search data to investigate top spiking search terms and the videos they lead to. For example, we've recently come across a new dance craze popping up in Taiwan called "Bobee.” Find out what other interesting trends we’ve uncovered.



New YouTube homepage for everyone
With the new YouTube homepage, rolled out to everyone this month, our goal was to put more of an emphasis on "videos for you.” So we removed or moved some elements of the page to make room for videos that matter more to you—your subscriptions, friends’ sharing and recommendations. We hope you enjoy more videos as a result and are always open to hearing your suggestions for improvement.

Five questions for Jack Conte and Natalie Dawn, Pomplamoose
What you hear is what you get with Pomplamoose, a YouTube musical partner that’s garnered millions of video views on YouTube. Every sound you hear in their music videos is produced by an instrument you see played in their music videos—a refreshingly old-fashioned idea they call the “videosong.” Pomplamoose’s approach to original music has opened up opportunities for them in other arenas like TV (see their Hyundai commercials). Learn how they got their start.



We’ll update you again in a few weeks. In the meantime, you can get frequent updates from the team on the YouTube Blog.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team