YouTube, or shall we call them, GoogTube, released the next version of their embedded player yesterday. What’s better? Well, I like to look at product enhancements from the opposite way. I examine what they do, and why they were invented. You have to look at enhancements in such a manner. I mean, why enhance if you’re not improving?
Enhancement #1 Saving Time
You no longer have to go to YouTube to get the embed or link code for a video. You simply click “menu” on the bottom right corner and the video shrinks in size to allow room to get code. I love this feature because it saves me time. Great work.
Enhancement #2 Uninterrupted Viewing
You can now scroll through related videos with a neat looking (Apple-type) browsing effect. This allows a viewer to simply continue to watch videos without having to leave the page. In other words, it’s uninterrupted viewing. Many think this is their key to monetization finally. Download Squad has some more information on this as well.
Although some hated the scrolling video icons in the player, and they did pull that back to only show when the menu button is clicked. I liked it though. Ah well.
Enhancement #3 Ratings & Tags
Not a lot of people are talking about these features, but I think they are important. You can now rate a video (by stars) without having to go to YouTube. This is important because we think that a rating is a piece of your YouTube search ranking. The other feature I like is that the player now puts related tags into/under the video that are clickable, which actually gives you a tag-type search function direct in the player. Probably better than trying to fit a search box in there I bet.
