YouTube is the largest video site on the internet, hands down. If it weren't for its creators though, there wouldn't be a YouTube. With that in mind, the company announced a set of new tools today at Vidcon. The purpose of these tools? Simple: Allow creators to be more creative.
While many of the tools were previewed and can be considered as "coming soon" features, the reveal fits in nicely with the wider creator community's repeated requests for more transparency about changes to YouTube's platform. Let's face it, changes can be disruptive and in the past YouTube has rolled out some fairly unpopular changes without telling anyone beforehand.
The new tools announced vary widely, but here's a quick list:
YouTube Creator Studio - Out now on Android and coming soon to iOS. The Creator Studio allows creators to view analytics, manage and edit videos, blast notifications and sort through comments, all on the go.
Audio Library Enhancements -Creators will now have access to royalty-free sound effects. This means you don't have to create all of your own sounds anymore, instead you can simply grab them from the library.
60 FPS Video- A HUGE part of YouTube is gaming videos. We all know the pain of seeing a 60 fps game moving at 30 fps on the video service, and now that all changes. Coming soon, 48 and 60 fps options will be available to go along with the 1080 quality settings now available. Will everyone care about this? No. is it a massively good thing for the YouTube gaming community? You bet it is.
Fan-submitted Subtitles- Not everyone on YouTube speaks the same language, but everyone does watch videos. Now, everyone can watch and enjoy the same videos. In theory.
Creator Credits- Creators love to collaborate with each other. So now, YouTube is letting collaborators name and link their fellows in a way that people might actually click. This one is in the "coming soon" category.
Bye Bye Annotations, Hello Cards- Annotations don't work on mobile devices. So now, YouTube is changing the way links are displayed by replacing them with cards that will work across all mobile, tablets and desktops. Another "coming soon" feature.
Fan Funding- Here's where the hate train probably starts for a lot of people. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms have been attracting the attention of creators because theres really no way to crowd fund things on YouTube. In an effort to retain creators and, of course, make more money off of them, YouTube is basically creating an online tip jar. Right there in YouTube. No need to go elsewhere. This feature is currently being tested "by a handful of selected creator channels".
So there you have it. Major changes are coming to YouTube. When all of them will be fully implemented is anyone's guess,b ut it seems that the platform is at least intent on innovating as the landscape of online video evolves. What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.
