Youtube Changing Layout and System for Premium Content

I guess this change is good. I would love to have new video players and the "Dim Light" feature. I just hope we still get annotations.

YouTube will soon unveil a redesign that clearly separates its premium and
long-form programming from the user-posted videos that account for most of its
activity.

According to two sources familiar with Google's plans for YouTube, the new design will do away with the current navigation scheme -- which funnels users into "videos," "channels," and "community" categories. That layout will be replaced with a tabbed navigation with clearly defined sections for professional content.

The new design will offer four tabs: Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos. The first three tabs will display premium shows, clips, and movies from Google's network and studio partners, all of which will be monetized with in-stream advertising. Meanwhile the Videos channel will house amateur and semi-pro content of the sort major brand advertisers have shied away from.

"They're putting up walls between all the UGC stuff, which will live within the video channel,...and the brand safe content," said one senior agency exec who was briefed on YouTube's plans.

The redesign also touches YouTube's video player. The new player interface closely resembles the video experience on Hulu, the News Corp.- and NBCU-owned video portal that's grown by leaps and bounds since its launch last year. Like Hulu, the new video player displays visual markers in places where ads are scheduled to play. Also
like Hulu, the YouTube player allows users to "dim the lights," reducing the
brightness of screen real estate outside the video frame.

"It's totally a Hulu approach, but that's best practices right now," said the exec.

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