A leaked YouTube redesign caught by Business Review USA shows a starkly different layout that emphasizes social sharing. It features Google+ and Facebook sharing tabs on a prominent profile sidebar. The inclusion of Facebook is surprising, but YouTube is a popular destination, which offers a perfect opportunity to introduce Facebook friends to Google+.
YouTube has been testing this design with a small percentage of users for several weeks. YouTube’s integration with Google+ actually began in October, when Google enabled users to connect their YouTube and Google+ accounts. This brought a “Posted to Google+” tab of videos to users’ YouTube homepages. But the leaked redesign takes the integration further, turning the homepage into a news feed that tracks trending and popular videos. It also emphasizes user profiles, showing Google’s intentions to unify users under one Google+ identity.
In October, YouTube’s design lead, Elizabeth Windram Laraki, left Google for Quora. Meanwhile, major Google properties like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Reader have gotten major redesigns to unify them with Google+ and introduce more social features. As SVP of Engineering Vic Gundotra made clear at Web 2.0 in October, Google+ represents a shift for the whole company. The leaked redesign shows that it’s YouTube’s turn to get the treatment.
A Google spokesperson had this to say about the redesign:
“With more videos coming to YouTube every minute we’re always experimenting with ways to help users and creators more easily find, watch and share the videos that matter most to them. We’re trying out this homepage on a small percentage of our total user base. As always, we’ll consider rolling changes out more broadly based on user feedback on this experiment.”
Thanks to Business Review USA for the great scoop!
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