YouTube Adds Embeddable Subscribe Buttons

YouTube is finally adding one-click embeddable Subscribe buttons to offsite pages, allowing users to subscribe to a company or individual's channel without visiting its YouTube page.

For paid channels, the Subscribe button links to the channel pages rather than automatically subscribing users, YouTube noted in a blog entry.

The move is a part of an effort to encourage users to subscribe to more channels.

"We want to help you build your channel's audience where ever your fans are," a YouTube spokesperson told Mashable. "Just like you've been able to embed your videos, now you can embed a one-click subscribe button on your site to make it easy for fans to follow you on YouTube."

The steps to add the new feature are relatively simple. Just enter the name of the channel by clicking here. YouTube then configures a personalized code, which you can copy and paste into any content management system running a website.

Image: AFP/Getty Images

5 Tips to Design the Best YouTube Channel Page

If you create and share your own videos on YouTube, then you've already taken the first step in putting your face out there. But there's another way to put your best face forward: Craft your channel page. Though your channel's landing page might appear simple (and it's grown simpler over the years), there are a number of features you can fine-tune to optimize a viewer's experience. You can't customize like you used to, and there's a lot of white space, but there are very specific ways to make your page stand out. Read on to find out how you can turn curious viewers into devoted subscribers.

Do you have any tips for boosting your YouTube profile? Let us know in the comments.

1. Post a great channel trailer.

 As soon as visitors land on your page, you want to hook them. A channel trailer is a great way to do it. You'll want something brief, attention-grabbing and representative of the kind of content you post. Don't tell people what you do — show them.

As the first piece of content some will see, the trailer is also a good place to plant the seed for subscribing. Get a quick line in there asking viewers to hit "subscribe." But do it subtly.

2. Optimize your channel name and description. 

Remember that your channel name and description won't just appear on your homepage. Your channel will appear in searches and suggested channel categories across YouTube, so make sure it's appealing. Note that your channel name isn't the same as your URL; you can change the former without affecting the latter.

As you write your channel description, it's good to think about how it will appear across the site and around the web. You'll need a description that highlights your most important content right up front.

3. Pick the right icon. 

The key here is to select something that will look good at very small resolutions. It's not like choosing your Facebook or Twitter profile photo; first of all, this is about branding. Your friends don't care that much if your photo is recognizable, or if it's even of you. But in the age of short attention spans, this tiny piece of real estate is your best bet for pulling viewers to your channel page.

4. Make beautiful channel art. 

Again, it's important to consider where your content will be seen other than your channel page. Or in this case, how it will be seen. You'll have viewers on desktops, tablets, laptops, phones, televisions and whatever new format comes out next week. That means you need to optimize your image to look great on every platform.

YouTube recommends the dimensions 2560x1440 px. Check out its image guidelines to see how your art will be cropped across different platforms (who will be seeing what). Here's the full art for Mashable's YouTube channel page. Note that only the illustrated band in the center of the image is visible on desktop.

When you're drafting the art, try to give the viewer something to connect to beyond a brand or a logo. If you want to throw your pretty face in there, do so. YouTube lists GoPro and Epic Meal Time as well-designed channel pages.

5. Maintain your feed. 

As a content creator, you'll want to keep your loyal subscribers entertained. If you don't upload on a weekly schedule, the feed can give you the appearance of being active. A default feed will include your uploads, videos you have liked, videos you added to playlists and channels to which you subscribe. 

You can adjust your sharing settings if you don't want to flood your subscribers with updates. But you can also approach it strategically: You might only want to like certain videos or comment on content on certain days of the week, for instance.

Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, Jo Nakashima

YouTube Now Has One Billion Monthly Users

We all know YouTube is the biggest video sharing site around, but how big is it, exactly, when compared to sites such as Facebook or Twitter? Here's a hint: YouTube has just hit one billion monthly unique users.
For comparison, Facebook hit that milestone in October 2012. It took the social network eight years to reach one billion active users — almost the exact amount of time as YouTube, which was founded in February 2005. Twitter, which has been around since March 2006, has more than 200 million monthly active users.

The YouTube team gives us a few more comparisons for good measure: "Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube. Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences. If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India," says YouTube on its official blog.

YouTube also gives a more detailed insight on what's powering this growth in another blog post about Generation C and mobile devices. According to YouTube, Generation C (or Gen C) is a generation that has grown up consuming content "where and when they want". They watch YouTube on all screens; they constantly switch between devices, they're deeply engaged with online video and they thrive on community. Finally, they're curators — they care about finding content that's important to them.

Gen C, which YouTube considers to be its core audience, now watch just as much YouTube content on smartphones as they do on PCs, and 67% of Gen C watch YouTube on two devices or more, compared to 53% of the general population.

With the rise of smartphones, which have become the dominant force in the mobile phone industry in the last couple of years and show no signs of slowing down, YouTube needn't worry about maintaining this growth for at least another couple of years.

Image credit: YouTube

Link Your Google+ Page With Your YouTube Page

Users will soon be able to link their YouTube page to their Google+ page using a channel name as your Google identity.
Google have been allowing YouTube users to use their Google+ profiles on their YouTube channels for months, using their real names rather than old YouTube account names.
They will continue to develop new engagement features that can take the best of both worlds from YouTube and Google+.

David Boyle of Google says: “While using a full name from a Google+ profile might work well for a creator who wants to build their brand as an individual, this simply doesn’t work if you don’t want a full name on your channel.”
“If you run a channel with a name like BlueXephos or VlogBrothers, you should create a Google+ page (as opposed to a profile) with that name.”

Google has been beta testing the option with a number of channels and will become available to all creators in the coming weeks.

What are your thoughts on the link between these two sites?

YouTube Expands Original Content With New European Channels

YouTube has expanded its roster of original channels with new, global channels from France, Germany, the UK and the US.
The new channels will cover a variety of topics, including sports, music, comedy, news, animation, local cuisine, health and wellness. So far, YouTube has launched 100 original channels; the new additions will bring this number to 160.

In the UK, for example, “Fast, Furious & Funny” is covering cars; in Germany, “Motorvision” will cover the same topic. The UK will have four sports channels, covering cycling and football among other topics. In France, a channel called “X-Treme video” is dedicated to extreme sports; in Germany, it will be “Boneless.”
You can see a list of all YouTube original channels here.

In a blog post, YouTube also shared some stats on its original programming. According to the company, the top 25 original channels are averaging over a million views weekly, and 800 million viewers are watching 4 billion hours of content every month — up from 3 billion hours earlier this year.
Furthermore, the number of subscribers has doubled year-over-year, and YouTube partners are reaching the 100,000 subscriber mark five times faster than two years ago.

RIP YouTube iPhone App, 2007-2012 — Why You Won’t Be Missed

Back when the iPhone first launched, there was a joke about the YouTube app on it. One nerd, or tech reviewer, would describe it as a “dumbed-down YouTube experience.” To which another would shoot back: “is that even possible?”

Well, here we are, five years later. YouTube the service has gotten a whole lot stronger and smarter in so many ways (as well as a whole lot dumber in some of its corners — something which turns out to be exceedingly and eternally possible).

But the iPhone app, even transplanted to the iPad, has stayed exactly as dumb as it always was. It’ll find the YouTube content you want a third of the time, if you’re lucky. They should call it YouRoulette, because you never know what a search might bring.

No wonder iPhone users in the know long ago switched to simply going to m.youtube.com on Safari, where a lot more stuff is available. When I heard about that fix, I was mad as hell at myself for all the wasted time on the app.

And from whom did I hear it? From YouTube staffers themselves. Even they didn’t believe in the thing.

So it’s really not such a bummer to hear Monday’s news — Apple has dumped the YouTube app from the next iPhone/iPad operating system, iOS 6. It’s ostensibly because “our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended,” according to an Apple spokesperson.

I’m sure it has, but I’m also sure Apple couldn’t be more relieved about that. This is a company that cares about great design, about stuff that just works, and the YouTube app was never that. It was so hobbled, it reminded me of the awful old WAP mobile web browsers that Apple effectively destroyed with the iPhone.

I’m also sure it’s just a coincidence that Apple is distancing itself from Google in general, for example replacing the Google Maps app in iOS6 with its own (called, confusingly enough, Maps). If you want the Google Maps iPhone app, chances are you’ll have to download it again — though what we don’t know is whether you’ll be able to make it the default for maps.

We do know that Google is working on a new YouTube app, according to the same Apple source. We’re still waiting for confirmation from YouTube.

Regardless, we’ll soon see the end of an app experience so poor, it couldn’t have made the iPhone look worse if the Android team had planted it there.

You’ll notice it’s one of the few original apps you can’t actually delete on your iPhone? Consider it deleted now, and good riddance.

We Now Watch 4 Billion Hours of YouTube Videos Per Month

YouTube users now watch more than four billion hours of video through the site each month. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 456,000 years of cat videos, sports highlights, TED Talks and other content per month. Or, the equivalent of watching the original Nyan Cat video about 66 billion times.

First reported as a casual mention in a Wall Street Journal article earlier this week, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed the number to Mashable on Wednesday. And things are moving fast with the video sharing giant — the company just announced in May that users were watching a piddling three billion hours of footage per month. That’s the number YouTube still reports on its official press page as of this writing.

That page also reports that YouTube users upload 72 hours of content to the site every minute. In fall of 2008, users were uploading just 10 hours of video each minute.

While YouTube may be best known its viral videos, the Google subsidiary has recently been experimenting with more original and professionally produced channels as a way to attract even more viewers — and ad dollars. Around the beginning of this year, YouTube invested more than $150 million to fund channels featuring stars including Amy Poehler and Wayne Brady. In May, it said it would sink another $200 million into the project.

If the new channels continue to succeed, it may not be long before YouTube sucks us all into watching five billion hours of video through the service each month.

How many hours do you think you spend each month watching YouTube videos? Share with us in the comments.

Need More YouTube Views? Try Pinterest

Independent film and entertainment studio Lionsgate holds the majority (30%) of the market share of fitness DVDs. Naturally, the company decided to create a YouTube channel comprised of athletic content. What it didn’t anticipate is how effectively Pinterest could promote its YouTube presence.

Launched Jan. 3, 2012 as part of YouTube’s Original Content initiative, Lionsgate BeFit features dozens of workout videos from celebrity trainers like Jillian Michaels and Jane Fonda. The channel posts to YouTube once a day, with the goal to generate as many viewers as possible to each video within 48 hours.

And what has been BeFit’s most successful traffic generator? Pinterest.

Digital brand and content manager of Lionsgate, Tahndi Campbell, says that within five days of Feb. 1, when Lionsgate introduced video content to its Pinterest profile, Lionsgate BeFit’s YouTube activity doubled, from 200,000 to 400,000 views. “I think we are reaching our audience in such a way that makes them highly, highly engaged with our product,” says Campbell.

Brands, media organizations and retailers alike are celebrating astounding referral traffic, thanks to Pinterest. Lionsgate is turning that traffic into views, and those views into advertising opportunities. The majority of Lionsgate BeFit’s pins are YouTube videos, which Pinterest users can watch right on Pinterest.com. The views not only count toward the channel’s YouTube traffic, but users are also exposed to the video’s original ads as well, which helps for future monetizing opportunities.

“We look at Pinterest as a way to cultivate an audience that is actually going to click the links and get that initial burst of traffic to our YouTube channel,” says Campbell. She explains that the more viewers they attract to YouTube, the higher the chance for continued engagement and commenting. “That’s going to send our video up in the search results, up in featured and suggested video. Then, it’s in front of a whole new audience on YouTube, even if we only drive 20 [Pinterest] people there who are highly engaged users.”

Anyone concerned that Pinterest users don’t actually click the links that host original content need only look at the numbers. Pinterest is now among the top five websites to drive referrals, and is neck and neck with Twitter at 3.6% of referral traffic. For some women’s lifestyle magazines and retailers, Pinterest referrals have already surpassed Facebook’s.

Social media manager of Lionsgate home entertainment, Megan Peterson, has observed that Pinterest users are very apt to search for pins’ original websites. “Pinterest users are very source hungry,” she says. “They want to know where that picture’s from, they want to know where they can get that workout, or where they can get that recipe.”

Since brands are still determining which content works best on Pinterest, Lionsgate decided to use other social media platforms to inform its Pinterest activity. “If we post a video on Facebook and it gets a certain amount of shares, then chances are if we post it on Pinterest, its going to get the same amount of pins. We’ve seen that to be true,” says Campbell.

Similarly, they don’t want to bombard their Twitter audience by tweeting every single pin. “Not everything needs to be pinned because that’s annoying on the Twitter feed,” says Peterson. “You don’t want to just be pinning and tweeting, at the same time, everything you’re doing.”

Finally, Lionsgate celebrates the inherently personal nature of Pinterest. “If you look at our Pinterest page, it really looks like a girl is speaking to what it is that she’s trying to work on on her body,” says Campbell. Where other social networks lack a human quality, Pinterest allows brands to create personas based on taste that speak to very specific demographics.

Using Pinterest, Lionsgate has managed to achieve twofold success: The brand has not only cashed in on the hottest new social network, but it has used its Pinterest presence to strengthen YouTube views. Will Pinterest continue to surprise us?