YouTube tests video recommendation feature – Info PR

It could soon become a lot easier to find videos on YouTube or uncover the
next big vlogger.

YouTube is experimenting with an “Explore” Tab, which is currently
available to a small subset (one percent) of iOS users. However, if the
test goes well, the platform could roll out the feature to all users.

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YouTube’s director of product management and host of YouTube’s Creator
Insider channel, Tom Leung, posted a video explaining how the feature works
along with its aim:

“Explore is designed to help you be exposed to different kinds of topics,
videos or channels that you might not otherwise encounter, but they’re
still personalized,” Leung said. “They’re still based on your viewing
activity.”

The feature competes with other social media platforms such as Instagram,
Twitter and Snapchat. Ultimately, it’s designed to persuade users to spend
as much time as possible on YouTube.

The Verge reported:

The new Explore tab, meanwhile, will be more similar to the Explore tab
offered by, say, Instagram, which aside from the personalized “for you”
channel,

also offers up feeds

dedicated to science, sports, art, and more for users to scroll through.

Twitter provides a similar service, which lets users scroll through different types of feeds that aren’t
necessarily full of people that they follow.

Along with testing an Explore feature, YouTube recently announced support
for hashtags—another step to help users find videos (and help creators
attract viewers).

Engadget reported:

The video platform now allows uploaders to

add hashtags
to their descriptions and video titles to make it easier for viewers to
find their channels and content. Like in other places on the internet,
YouTube’s hashtags are clickable and will bring up a results page with
other videos tagged with the same thing. The website will even display the
top three hashtags at the bottom of the video and above its title.

For social media influencers, YouTube’s Explore feature could beef up their
followings and help them better attract audiences. That could lead to more
ad revenue on their videos or even marketing partnerships with
organizations.

For marketers, it means more opportunities to find influencers that can
reach target audiences. It could also help grow branded channels.

CNet reported:

From the creators’ perspective, Leung says the tab should help their
audience growth as people access a wider variety of content — currently
YouTube’s recommendations are usually based around creators whose videos
they’ve already watched.

[…] In May, the company revealed that it
has 1.8 billion people registered viewers
every month. Before that, we learned that
400 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute—plenty for the “Explore” feature to draw from.

The Next Web reported:

Similarly to Instagram’s Explore tab, the feature will help users discover
more videos and creators that usually get buried under the thousands of
other daily content uploads.

In addition to users discovering more videos, this feature will also work
in favor of creators. Their videos will be exposed to new audiences, even
if they don’t make the trending list, that have probably never stumbled
across their channel before.

[…] Currently, YouTube recommend videos to users that are often from the
same creators that they watch frequently or showcase already established
YouTubers.

Though this feature is just in the testing stages, YouTube is already
communicating with its influencers—something the platform has been
criticized for in the past.

In his video, Leung said:

A lot of folks have been saying, “Hey, you guys at YouTube: You’re running
experiments all the time. Why don’t you let us know ahead of time if it’s
going to impact creators or if you think creators will be interested.” And
we kind of did that with the video Barbara did about the custom thumbnail
experiment—this one is another [type of announcement video].

What do you think of the feature, PR Daily readers?

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