Super Secret YouTube Channel 2.0 Beta

Every other major Social Media site seems to try to come up with new design and upgrade their features these days.  So after Facebook, Flickr and recently Twitter, I was’t very surprise when I heard that YouTube is doing it too.

If the last YouTube’s update we more on the video watching side, this time it’s the Channel that gets the make-over!

So, what’s changed ? The hint is on the number 2.0! Yes … rounder corners and Ajax are the two things that you can see dominating the changes.  As a matter of fact, let’s do the ‘Show not Tell’ thing.  In the next two screenshots below, you can see the difference between my existing Channel and the new Beta Channel (click on the thumbnail to view the full image).

Judging from the comments of the blog post above, it seems to me that many users don’t like the changes.  This is of course not surprising.  It happened with Facebook, it happened with Twitter, and it will happen to anything that new.  People just doesn’t seem to like changes.  As for me, I like what I’ve seen, I hate the old Channel design, it looked so 1990.  Mind you, the Beta Channel is, let’s say, Beta :)  There are many things that still don’t work, it’s still very buggy.  But I’m sure they will iron-out these bugs bit by bit.

So, what if you want to participate in the Beta testing? Well, you need to go to this Super Secret link :)  Which will allow you to switch your existing Channel to the new one (don’t worry, you will be able to switch back anytime).

When you click on that blue button, you will be switched to the new Channel Design.

You have to click OK, to enter the Channel.  Then you will see a new Toolbar with buttons that enables you to change the settings of your Channel.  You will also notice the ‘Revert!’ button, which will switch you back your channel to the old design.  The following screenshot will show what settings are under each button (all forms are loaded via Ajax).

The top part of the channel has also a Toolbar which shows the Channel Title, a set of Filters, the Edit link and the View changer.

The filters (All, Uploads, Favorites and Playlists), will change what videos are shown on the main video pane according on what you choose, e.g. choosing Favorites will show only videos that you’ve made favorite.  The Edit link will allow you to edit the setting regarding which set of videos are shown on the video sidebar.

Each module has an edit link too.

A special mention goes to the Recent Activity module, which shows our recent activities (doh!), such as befriending somebody, uploading new video, favoriting a video, subscribing to a channel, and … yes … you can post a bulletin, which basically a Status Update ala Twitter/Facebook.

So, what do you think? Do you like the new design?  I don’t know about you, but I like it.  It looks cleaner and easier to setup.  Granted that is still buggy at the moment, but as I said, they are working on it.

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