This week the folks at YouTube revealed a new way to work with videos for kids and young adults. YouTube's latest feature was made as "a new choice for parents who have decided their tweens and teens are ready to explore YouTube with a supervised account." This feature will be launched first with a BETA mode, with a larger launch later this year.
Twenty-eight years after forming in Paris, France, Daft Punk broke up. They announced this end-of-days with a video posted on their YouTube channel. The video was titled Epilogue, featuring a clip from Electroma in which the two robots meet, and one commits self-destruct. Daft Punk publicist Kathryn Frazier confirmed the breakup.
YouTube seems to have quietly rolled out the option to watch 4K/60p videos on any mobile device even if it doesn't have an Ultra HD display. Though you won't get quite the same visual quality you'd get with that higher-resolution screen, those who have lesser display resolutions will still benefit from turning on the 4K video option.
There's a new show called Alpha Betas coming from the studio that released Rick and Morty: Starburns Industries. The game focuses on YouTube gaming personalities Evan Fong (VanossGaming); Marcel Cunningham (BasicallyIDoWrk), Tyler Wine (I AM WILDCAT), and Brian Hanby (Terroriser). It also includes the voices of Stephanie Beatriz, Paget Brewster, Chris Parnell, Brent Morin, and John DiMaggio. This show is animated, and it's made by showrunners David Lee, Chris Bruno, and 3BlackDot.
Some YouTube creators are finding an extra button in their YouTube app this week. This new button is relatively massive, appearing with a camera-like icon and a music symbol, suggesting users take advantage of the collaborative powers of the platform. The button allows the user to create a 15-second Short video.
If you're one of the people who don't enjoy watching football but watch the Super Bowl for its advertisements, YouTube will make things a bit easier for you this upcoming weekend. Google has detailed some features it has for football fans, including its YouTube AdBlitz plan that'll offer up many of the big game's ads.
Smart TVs and set-top boxes are almost a dime a dozen these days, from those provided by TV makers and cable operators to the myriad devices that run some form of Android, not Android TV. The current generation of devices and platforms boast of advanced functions, some of which take a page right out of smartphones, but that was not always the case. Older boxes used more bespoke software that needed to be maintained constantly, leaving users at a loss when apps and content providers pull out, like in the case of an older Apple TV.
YouTube remains the world's biggest video-sharing site even with the likes of Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram eating away some parts of that pie. Despite the platform's goal of maximizing engagement, especially with money-making YouTubers, it has been criticized at times for being slow on innovating new features and implementing much-needed ones. Lately, however, it has been testing out features that are eerily similar to some other platforms' features and its latest clearly takes a page out of Twitch's clip-sharing functionality.
The Biden administration has made White House press briefings more accessible for people who are deaf or have trouble hearing. If you head over to the official White House channel on YouTube, you'll now be able to watch these press events with an American Sign Language interpreter, something Press Secretary Jen Psaki says is intended to improve accessibility.
It's been a long time coming, but it looks like YouTube finally has HDR support on Xbox consoles. It doesn't matter if you're using a console from this generation or the last, if you're streaming YouTube on a TV that supports HDR, you should be able to tap into HDR while you watch. This is something that has apparently been in the works for a number of years, but it's here now at last.
Back in the late 2000s, when streaming services like Netflix and Hulu were just getting going, I was convinced that those services would change the way we watch TV. Even back then, it wasn't difficult to envision a future where cable wasn't the only way we watched shows. Fast forward to today and things have largely panned out as expected. The streaming market is fragmented as everyone attempts to build out their own streaming services, yes, but these days you can get along just fine with a few streaming subscriptions, which still comes in at less than the cost of a cable package.
Netflix may be the king of video streaming and VODs but YouTube remains at the top for all other kinds of videos (ironically except the kind that Netflix offers). As such, it becomes the prime platform for reaching out to millions of viewers and, consequently, millions of potential customers. The latter is exactly why YouTube is apparently experimenting with embedding shopping links right inside videos for the benefit of sellers, viewers, and, of course, YouTube.