YouTube's new "watch a video" page

The mouth has spoken: YouTube's new play a video page is good for the social media professional.

Last week YouTube launched a new "watch a video" page with some excellent features for social media optimization. Certainly one of the most significant changes is the "customize this embed" option.

Customize this Embed:
The new page corrects what the mouth considers an error of the new embedded video player that YouTube launched a few weeks ago. With the new "customize this embed" link, a user can choose between the old "share" link and the new "menu" link. You can see the difference on a sample page here.

The new "menu"

The old "share"

The new options are:

• "include related videos" resulting in the menu link [the default] or
• "don't include related videos" resulting in the share link

Include links when...
So which does the professional media socialist want? Well - that depends. If you've done a good job of controlling your "related video" links (an upcoming social mouth post) and you have additional content that you want your visitor to see than select "include related videos".

Don't include if....
If you don't have other videos or haven't been careful with your social media search optimization (SMSO) and your related links aren't as desired, or you want your visitor to easily share the video, select the "don't include related videos".

And the code....
If you've already embedded videos and want to remove the menu button, you can manually do so by changing your embedded video code slightly.

Sample code to show the related videos:


Sample code to NOT show the related videos:


This will look familiar to those of you have already discovered that you can add the autoplay code to make videos start playing automatically add &autoplay=1.

Sample code to NOT show the related videos and have the video play automatically:


The Other Changes:
Also a plus for the social mediast, the user's channel is more prominently displayed with the new layout and should drive up channel traffic. Other videos from the same user also have a more prominent spot.

As a slight negative, the video description is now "below the fold" for some monitor resolutions. So if a social mediast is driving traffic to an external website using an http: link in the description, traffic might be slowed.

The new description also hides "categories" and "tags" and the mouth is fine with that. If I spend my time and/or money driving traffic to a specific video, I'd rather my related and other videos be easier to click than a specific tag I used to drive traffic there in the first place.

Additionally, “share video” and “post video” have been combined into one link “share”. From there an additional link “friends” must be clicked to email video to friends. This is a wash for the mouth.

Also, “Save to favorites” has been split into two new options “save” and “add to playlists.” I like this better.

"Related videos” appear in 3 across 5 down rows now showing 15 instead of 20 videos. Also – at least for now- the “show all related videos” link is missing. "Director videos” have been removed. A new “promoted videos” appears below related videos. Currently the “promoted videos” don’t have any correlation to the “featured videos” on the home page, so the mouth is not sure how they are chosen.

And lastly, which I will touch on more in upcoming posts, if “active sharing” is activated that appears second on the right below user’s videos and if video is part of a “stream” stream appears below “active sharing” videos.

On a creepy note, if you click on a user in the "active sharing" video it pulls up a new row of videos that the user has recently watched. So be careful of your video selections, because if you have "active sharing" (found in the TestTube section) than others will know about your latest views: the good, bad and perverted as they may be.

So in summary:

Good for the social mediast:

• New embed video options (choice between "menu" and "share")
• More prominent channel link to drive traffic to your channel
• Better placement of your other videos

Not good for the social mediast:

• Description below the fold on some video monitors (effecting external links' prominence)
• YouTube's tendency to change things before informing you.

Thus sayeth the mouth....