Video games
Google's video sharing site YouTube unleashed a couple of interesting innovations late yesterday: an update of its mobile site and the launch of YouTube Leanback.
Mobile video consumption is currently in an exponential phase. The YouTube blog post refers to Morgan Stanley's mobile internet report at the end of 2009 in predicting that more people will connect to the web via mobile devices than desktops in five year's time. Additionally, mobile YouTube usage jumped 160 percent year-on-year in 2009.
Another telling stat is that YouTube Mobile now streams as many video playbacks per day as the whole of YouTube did when Google bought it in 2006 - over 100 million.
While YouTube Mobile was first launched in 2007, it's only recently that handsets and networks have been able to do mobile video justice. To accommodate this new technology, Google is rolling out an updated version of the site. As well as further optimising the UI for mobile devices, and adding some social features, the key improvement is claimed to be speed.
On top of that, Google has officially launched YouTube Leanback - which it previewed at the recent I/O developer conference.
This is a pretty straightforward YouTube feature, which seems to be designed with the future Google TV in mind. Basically, when you go to www.youtube.com/leanback, you immediately start watching a full-screen stream of stuff YouTube reckons you want to watch.
Right now that seems to mean stuff from whichever YouTube channels you subscribe to, with the most recently uploaded first. Apparently the feed is also based on your YouTube settings and preferences, but we'd be even more impressed if it had an algorithm that adapted according to what you watch. There is the option of integrating with Facebook, however.
Lastly, is it just us, or is there something pointed about Apple devices being used to demonstrate these new services in both videos?
