YouTube has announced a number of changes to its website and is promising to keep users more up to date with what is going on.
On its blog this week, the YouTube team posted: "we figured more frequent, casual 'release notes' would be good to publish.
"That way you can get a broader sense of what's new on the site, from major features to cosmetic touches, as well as background on the thinking or motivation behind some of these items."
New features
In this update, a number of new features have been launch. Although none of them are ground-breaking, they have been designed to make YouTube a simpler, smarter service.
- Better mobile integration: First up is an improvement of the site's mobile service. A new mobile landing page has been created, which is a "a lot more smooth and intuitive" than previous efforts.
- Twitter functionality: The site now has a "share to Twitter" button. The folks at YouTube have realised that Twitter is the hot, new thing on the internet and have made it easier to post links of videos to the micro-blogging service.
- Easier log-in: There's now a one-place sign-in for users who already have a Google account.
- Social-networking: YouTube has now made it easier to contact your friends through the service. There's now the ability for you to send an invite and personalised note to a username or email address. And there's also an instant friend link to instant message.
- HD is simplified: If you want to post HD videos, you now don't need a degree in HTML, as YouTube has simplified the way to get hi-def footage on to the site. "We want to give you more control over how your video looks, including the option of it being eye-blazingly clear (HD), so we've now added an official URL parameter (hd=1) for sharing HD links," the blog says.
Other improvements include a clean-up of names, so advertising is now classed as 'promotional videos'. The watch page has also has a bit of a spring clean.
Unfortunately, there's still no word when music videos are going to be back on the site.
