YouTube announced today that it will provide its users with a “video speed dashboard”, which shows them not only their average speed, but the speed of other users for comparison.
While the idea of a speed test is nothing new, of course, this puts it directly in front of a lot of people’s faces that would never see it otherwise.
The data is broken down into users in the same city, state, country, and even offers a comparison with others using the same ISP. You can also see how you compare to the global average.
We have to assume that this is YouTube’s way of showing you that it’s your problem, or your ISP’s problem, that your videos are not running smoothly.
“So, what can you do with all of this new data about your video speed?” YouTube’s blog post asks and we have to admit, we’re not sure either. We imagine it will just end up in a lot of confused and angry calls to ISPs over how and why things aren’t running as fast as they should be.
To see how your speeds stack up against the rest, just visit YouTube’s dashboard and take a look.
While the dashboard gives you a comparison to other users and regions, it says nothing of what speeds you should expect to need in order to watch streaming video.
