YouTube give its homepage a snugger fit, with “personally relevant” content

The YouTube team has just updated their homepage for all users worldwide, trying to make it more “personally relevant” for each logged-in user. Apart from adding features, they’ve removed a whole bunch too, trying to give the user a warm and cosy feeling of home when he logs on to his favourite online video site.

[RELATED_ARTICLE]They’ve removed unpopular sections like “Videos Being Watched Now”, and moved non-personally filtered videos away from the foreground to the right pane, like “Spotlight” and “Featured Videos”. All this is to be able to squeeze a whole bunch of user-relevant content into the centre. YouTube’s new design was based on feedback the team got from some experimental homepages they opened up to user opinion, and the below enhancements (in YouTube’s words) are the end result:

• Increased focus on videos that matter to you (subscriptions, friend’s sharing, recommendations)
• You can easily filter your homepage to show only the latest uploads from your subscriptions
• Don’t miss anything; if a channel uploads four videos in a day, you’ll see all four – instead of just the latest video
• Quick access to the inbox when you have new messages or comments
• Knows what you have seen (videos you’ve watched are grayed out)
• Remove any video (hover and click the “x” button)

Expect things to keep changing, becoming “simpler” and “more personal”, as YouTube has vowed that they’ll be “listening”. Send feedback in video form, in the forums, on the YouTube blog, or on Twitter.