The world's most popular video website is quietly transforming itself. YouTube's massive archive of video is being automatically organised into niche channels that cover seemingly everything, from daredevil wingsuit flying to an odd style of finger dancing called "tutting".
A redesign launched yesterday will make these automated channels ? not the same as existing channels that belong to users ? a core part of what people experience when they log on. It's all part of parent company Google's efforts to get you to watch more videos online. Put simply, Google wants YouTube to be the future of television.
"It's somewhat unlikely that someone will go out there and program 24 hours a week of wingsuit flying," says Noam Lovinsky, director of product management at YouTube. "But we want to make sure there is a channel for that."
Algorithms build the automated channels by tracking user activity. When someone enters a term like "wingsuits" into YouTube, for example, the site records how a user navigates the search results, which video they end up clicking, which clips they go on to after that, and so on. It then scans user comments for each video, looking for words that help describe the clip.
Software also watches as users program their own channels, gathering metadata which, when aggregated over millions of users, can be used to build an interesting channel for everyone.
Content analysed
Even the content of videos is analysed by machine vision and listening software to help assign them to channels (see "Operation Finding Bieber"). Detecting laughter in a clip will help refine the automated comedy channels in the new YouTube, for instance. "We can tell that there's music in the video, or laughing, whether it's shot outside or inside," says Cristos Goodrow, YouTube's head of search and discovery.
YouTube will also be pushing its users to tag video using labels from a structured library called Freebase. The idea is ultimately to make it easier for newly uploaded videos to find their way into a channel. The company hopes this will compel users to stay longer and watch more video, so it can serve more advertisements.
To help spark interest in the new channels, YouTube is aping a concept that's been around in traditional TV for years: the DVR box. As of 6 December, a personalised panel called "The Guide" has begun following users around on YouTube, gently pushing channels to them based on their activity, as well as helping keep track of new content from channels they already follow. A user who searches for videos about the US Open tennis tournament, then proceeds to watch nothing but Roger Federer clips, might be pushed to subscribe to the Roger Federer channel.
Ultimately, YouTube's engineers are trying to create a new formula for building television channels, one that relies on the entire YouTube-watching community for programming advice. But first it needs to classify its vast amount of content.
"Discovery is the absolute number one challenge for YouTube," says Rich Greenfield of BTIG Research, the research arm of investment firm BTIG in New York City. "Automated channels is their attempt to simplify it."
In many ways, the site is at the same point now as cable television was back in the early 90s, he adds. "If you'd asked people back then whether cable television would ever have the same level of content as broadcast, they'd have laughed." His guess is that "it won't take YouTube 30 years" to assert itself as a major competitor with today's television channels.
Operation Finding Bieber
The X-Factor musical talent quest of the future may be judged by a machine. While interning at Google in Mountain View, California, Eric Nichols of the University of Indiana in Bloomington developed a system that analyses the quality of the music in home videos uploaded to YouTube. The system analyses the audio for harmonious chords and tight rhythms, and is able to make a basic distinction between high and low quality music.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
Subscribe now to comment.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
Rebecca Soni Snoop Lion London 2012 Table Tennis badminton Dominique Dawes Gabby Olympic Gymnast Robyn Lawley
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.