The folks at YouTube must have set some insane new years resolutions. January isn’t even over yet and they’ve already unleashed subscription enhancements, HTML5 support, video rentals, and a slick music feature called Disco. Well, YouTube is keeping the productivity train rolling and busting out a complete redesign of the watch page and search functionality. Check it out :

The Old Watch Page

The NEW Watch Page

What’s New ?

Overall Cleaner Look

Almost all unnecessary text has been removed keeping the focus on the video itself. The video description has been moved underneath the video, comments and video responses are listed below that, and related videos run along the right rail.

Look Ma, No Stars

YouTube has been talking about the effectiveness of the 5 star rating system for some time now, and it looks like it didn’t make the cut. Instead you get the option to either ‘like’ a video or give it a ‘thumbs down’. Works for me!

HD You Can Understand

No more guessing what the quality of your video playback is. YouTube now allows you to select what type of p-ness you’d like to watch your video in

Smart Related Videos

The related videos on the right side of the watch page now change based on context. For example, if you come to a video through the search function, you will see additional search results on the right hand side for you to watch afterwards.

Find All Videos Uploaded by a User

I like this new feature a lot. The video uploader’s user name (located directly above the video) now has an expand button to show all videos uploaded:

Watch While you Search

Perhaps the coolest new feature is the ability to search for new videos to watch without interrupting the video you are currently watching. When you hit search, the video you are currently watching will shrink into the upper left hand corner of the screen making room for the search results:

Want to Try it Out ???

Click here to try out the NEW YouTube layout and be sure to let me know what you think, ya jerk !

According to a recent patent filing, it may get easier for the masses to create advertisements for YouTube. The patent, released January 14th 2010, is for a Video Overlay Advertisement Creator. Overlay ads are the text ads that appear in the lower quarter of a video and can be accompanied by an image:

Looking at the details in the patent image, you can see that YouTube is taking the overlay ad to a new, more customizable level:

(click to enlarge)

Some of the customizable features present in the patent:

• Ability to upload and place an image to the left or right
• Ability to change text and background color
• Two ad segments with different text & ability to change image
• Multiple click actions
• Play a video ad (by YouTube id) then link to site
• Link to site w/ no video ad
• Choose different overlay entrance styles
• Slide and Wipe
• Elastic
• Pop from Center
• Test your ad against a variety of background videos

I think we can all agree that this will make overlay ad creation easier and more accessible. Combine this ad generator with Google’s Video Targeting Tool and you now have a way to place your overlay ad on videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three. AWESOME !

The only thing not discussed in the patent is the bidding system for these overlay ads. Will these overlays be CPC or CPM based ? What if multiple advertisers want to advertise on the same video ? If anyone has any insight on this, please chime in on the comment board.

YouTube recently announced some enhancements to their subscription system that make it easier and more intuitive for video producers (and watchers) to share their videos. Here are some of the new features and some ideas on how to use them to you advantage:

YouTube Status Updates

The bulletins you write on your YouTube Channel are now broadcast to all your subscribers in the Recent Activity module on the YouTube homepage. So now instead of only being notified of new video uploads, your bulletin board acts more like a Facebook status update:

Now you can type a message AND attach a YouTube. Then when you hit the ‘post bulletin’ button, your post appears in the ‘Recent Activity’ feed of all your Subscribers:

This could be used to update subscribers of upcoming videos or topics, share videos you like with your subscriber base, or promote older videos when relevant.

Syndication Status

YouTube also rolled out a new indicator that shows the syndication status of your video after it’s been uploaded:

Once you hit 100% you know your video has been delivered to all of your subscribers. Pretty cool !

Delete Items from Subscription Feed

Lastly, YouTube introduced some new features to help you weed through your subscription videos. First off, when you hover over a video in your ‘Subscriptions’ module you’ll now see a tiny “x” in the upper right hand corner:

Clicking the “x” will remove the video from the list and replace it with another video. So now you can quickly sort through videos that interest you while removing the ones that don’t.

You can also adjust the setting to remove videos from this module once you’ve viewed them:

My Take ?

I think these are all great new features that add a lot of value to the subscription system in YouTube by increasing communication and making it easier to find videos that interest you.