Vote For Your Favourite Dancer

Thanks to the So You Think You Can Dance, dance is so hot right now. Not since the '80s and the days of Flashdance and Fame has the medium seen such a resurgence of popularity in movies and TV shows - and we're also seeing it in your YouTube videos.



So whether your style is krumping, hip-hop, West Coast swing or ballet, you'll enjoy checking out the finalists of the MyMutation global dance competition. The Sydney Opera House launched the competition in July, in association with YouTube and Sony, and their channel has received over 97,000 visits from more than 100 countries and territories.



Aspiring dancers from all over the globe entered the competition, highlighting the universal appeal of dance. In the first round, 75 entries were received from as far afield as India, Brazil, Germany, Italy , Mexico, Hawaii, UK, Canada, Russia, Malta, USA, Estonia, South Africa, New Zealand, Portugal and of course, Australia.



We're pleased to announce the winners of this first round: Chaz Cummings (Aus), Courtney Hale (NZ), Ellie Swiatkiwsky (Aus), Emma Watkins (Aus), Erica Fletcher (Aus), Kay Armstrong (UK), Kristyn Bilson (Aus), Leigh Beard UK), Morgan Holt (Aus), Sally Hillier (Aus), Sarah McCreanor (Aus), Nobel Lakave ( Aus) and Simone Chivas (Aus). Go to www.youtube.com/sydneyoperahouse to check out their winning round one entry and video blog.



An eclectic showcase of talent is on display, with styles including belly dancing, Irish jigs and hip-hop, and videos featuring children, animals, and tributes to Michael Jackson.



The 14 finalists now have a week to choreograph another solo and submit it back to Sydney Opera House by 24 August, when the public are invited to vote for their favourite dancer. Five dancers will then be selected to compete in the final round, where the winning dancer will not only experience the thrill of performing their own work live at Sydney Opera House, but also receive $2,000 in cash and a prize pack from Sony including a Handycam camcorder, Cyber-shot camera and a VAIO notebook. Everyone who votes can enter a prize draw to win a Handycam camcorder from Sony, so it's not just the dancers who are in the running to win cool prizes.



MyMutation is part of Spring Dance – the inaugural dance celebration at Sydney Opera House, running from 27 Aug – 27 September. Check it out at youtube.com/sydneyoperahouse.

Imagining the YouTube of the Future

What will watching video be like a few years from now? That's a question that we ask ourselves a lot here at YouTube. In a recent article in Forbes magazine, we shared a few ideas that we've been kicking around. We wanted to share them with you, too, as well as hear your ideas.



When pondering the future of video, these are some of the questions we ask ourselves:



• How long will people primarily use computers to interact with video? How quickly will they move to their televisions or mobile phones?



• What are new and better ways that will help people discover great videos to watch? What new recommendations can search provide? What about recommendations based on like-minded people? What are your friends and family watching?



• How might we allow people to organise YouTube for themselves? How can the experts in our community help us curate YouTube's massive collection?



In thinking about these questions, we've come to realize that YouTube's design needs to evolve to answer them. We want to find innovative and useful ways to surface recommendations to you, and we'll need to create the breakthrough tools that empower you to take center stage in this role.



The YouTube User Experience team uses storyboards to visualize ideas and kick off discussions about new products that will keep YouTube on the forefront of video technology. In the examples below, we used a nifty application called Comic Life that makes storyboarding fast and easy. These are snippets from two storyboards/scenarios that we used internally to talk about the YouTube of the future:

Those are just some of the ideas that we have been discussing. It's hard to predict the future, but it's one of the most fun and interesting parts of our job.



What do you think the future of video will hold? What do you want to see us do in one, two, or even five years? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.



Margaret Stewart, User Experience Manager, recently watched "Keyboard Cat Supports Michael Vick."

"Just-in-Time" Learning About Flagged Videos

Sometimes it happens. You've read the Community Guidelines, you think you understand the rules, and you upload videos that you believe comply with them. Then one day you receive a message from us informing you that one of your videos has "been disabled for violation of the YouTube Community Guidelines."

"Huh?" you ask yourself. "What's the connection between the Community Guidelines and my video?" Starting today, we'll help answer that question by including tips from the Community Guidelines in the messages we send you if we take down one of your videos.

For example, you post a video that features nudity. When it gets flagged by the YouTube community and removed by our staff, you'll receive this reminder: "Most nudity is not allowed on YouTube, particularly if it is in a sexual context. Videos that are intended to be sexually provocative are also generally not acceptable for YouTube. There are exceptions for some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not sexually gratuitous."

We think of this as "just-in-time" learning to help you make and upload videos that stay up on the site for the world to see.

Posted by the YouTube Team

Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment

Do small changes make a big difference? In the world of landing page testing, they certainly can. A few weeks ago, we ran one of the largest multivariate experiments ever: a 1,024 recipe experiment on 100% of our US-English homepage. Utilizing Google Website Optimizer, we made small changes to three sections on our homepage (see below), with the goal of increasing the number of people who signed up for an account. The results were impressive: the new page performed 15.7% better than the original, resulting in thousands more sign-ups and personalized views to the homepage every day.

Below is a screenshot of the homepage before the test and the three sections we focused on:


And here are examples of various fonts, messages, and colors we tested:

Section 1: (The words "Sign Up" were put in all caps)


Section 2: (We placed these bubble messages to the left of the word "Sign Up")


Section 3: (We experimented with these different banners in that area)




Can you guess which combination of elements performed the best?

(humming "Jeopardy" music)

If you guessed the Original "Sign Up" Font (section 1) + Red Bubble "Sign Up" (section 2) + White "Don't Just Watch, Participate" box (section 3), you win!

Winning Page:




While we could have hypothesized which elements result in greater conversions (for example, the color red is more eye-catching), multivariate testing reveals and proves the combinatorial impact of different configurations. Running tests like this also help guide our design process: instead of relying on our own ideas and intuition, you have a big part in steering us in the right direction. In fact, we plan on incorporating many of these elements in future evolutions of our homepage.

Curtis Lee, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "KFC Freestyle Delonte West."

P.S. If you need assistance running tests on your website, there are many Google Website Optimizer authorized consultants who can help. Special thanks to VKI Studios who assisted on ours.

Masthead Undergoes Redesign

You may notice something looks a little different about our masthead (top navigational area on the homepage) today, and that's because we've done a bit of housecleaning. We've streamlined and simplified the design to focus on the primary experience of YouTube: watching a video. The left side is dedicated to exploration: finding videos to watch through search and browse. The right side is all about organization of the videos that matter most to you: your subscriptions, your recent viewing history, and your own uploads.



A few features have been removed from this area, to keep it as clean and functional as possible. Unless you have your items in your Quicklist or Inbox, they will not appear on the homepage, and the country and language pulldown menus, once at the very top of the page, are now in the footer.


Next up, we'll be focusing on giving you the controls to make the masthead more personalized.



What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.



Shiva Rajaraman, Product Manager, recently favorited "Auto-Tune the News #7."

Yo! Megan Fox and Vin Diesel -- You Think You're Better Than Us?

OK, Ashton might have more followers on Twitter than
we do, but we're not going quietly into the night. Let's take a
friendly celebrity tussle to Facebook, shall we? where we've got the 12th most popular Product/Celebrity fan page
(thankyouverymuch). With 3.1 million fans, we're hovering above Mr.
Demi Moore, Rihanna and, er, potato chips (Pringles). That's not too
bad, but our sights are on you, Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam
Sandler and Vin Diesel. You stand in our way of leaderboard glory so
it's time for a good old fashioned Internet showdown.

You heard it here: we're going to pass these celebs in the next 60 days and if we don't, we'll eat humble pie and
spotlight video(s) on our homepage for the
nonprofit or non-commercial cause of their choosing. It's a stretch
goal, to be sure, as we'd have to gain approximately the following
numbers of fans to beat...

• Adam Sandler: 150K
• Lady Gaga: 290K
• Will Smith: 965K
• Megan Fox: 1.4M
• Vin Diesel: 2.2M
  
  

Think we can do it? Help us get there by joining our Facebook group
now. Because we so want to be able to say that we're stronger than Vin
Diesel, cooler than Will Smith and hotter than Megan Fox.


Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently favorited "J.J. Abrams: The mystery box."