In further convergence news, Google this week launched youtubexl in a bid to take the service onto a TV screen near you.
Essentially this is YouTube as we know and love it but with big chunky menu items optimised for TV navigation. Functionality has also been reduced to the bare minimum to keep things clean and simple. Social functions such as comments and share seem to be the main casualties here. While the loss of the comments window is not missed (in fact the ever reliable "sensitve" nature of a lot of these comments has for long time been a problem for YouTube in my view) I hope the share function may be reintroduced in a later version.
While clearly designed as an on-demand TV experience, the platform will also find its way onto games consoles such as XBox and PS3 and it is on the latter devices that there is already a social culture of connecting and sharing experiences. One of YouTube's great strengths is its "check out this clip" viral nature so it can't help but feel like a missed opportunity to have disabled sharing functionality at this time.
With the shift to the big screen, the door also opens up for different, and dare I say it, perhaps even more traditional forms of spot advertising. Could this move onto the big screen be the point at which Google are able to better monetise the site? The details of targeting would certainly need to be ironed out, but the biggest barrier to this goal is likely the one that has always dogged YouTube - premium (or should I say premium rate paying?) advertisers are still reluctant to place their ads next to content of variable and sometimes controversial quality.
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