Thus, YouTube has introduced “vertical video playback”, in its app as well; Wojcicki added that more features might be coming onto the mobile app later in the year. Wojcicki defended YouTube’s business and referred back to statistics announced during her keynote address.
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As per the new update, the app will now contain three tabs- Home, Subscriptions and Account. YouTube is moving to keep pace with a major redesign of its mobile app, now available for Android and coming soon to Apple devices. The entry also notes that you can now view fullscreen vertical videos with one tap.
Finally Rafati, herself the chief executive of a company overseeing a lot of video content, asked Wojcicki about YouTube’s decision to move away from measuring total views as its metric of success in favor of watch time, or the amount of time viewers spend actually playing videos.
This growth is benefiting creators as well: the number of YouTube channels boasting six-figure incomes has increased by 50 percent year-over-year. Here, Youtube will generate a list of videos for the user to check out based on any previous videos they may have watched.
YouTube now claims more than half of its viewing on mobile devices, and with smartphones playing an increasingly crucial role for creators too, these latest updates will undoubtedly go down well across the board.
YouTube has refreshed its mobile app, rolling out a series of features which it claims will make things easier for both users and creators.
“With YouTube you are able to stay true to yourself and find an audience as passionate as you are”, she said.
Wojcicki also talked about the power that YouTube has in making people celebrities, as the community chooses who deserves the popularity vote – a phenomenon she called “the reinvention of television”.
In the past year, YouTube has also opened new production spaces, in New York, Berlin, and Sao Paulo, with Mumbai and Toronto to follow suit in 2016.
The new announcements are bound to have a bigger impact than Wojcicki’s big reveals at VidCon 2014, such as the fan funding feature that debuted last September, then quickly disappeared from everyone’s radar.
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‘With your phone and a piece of Cardboard you can see some pretty fantastic stuff, ‘ the firm said.
