YouTube Mobile Gets a Kick Start

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 | 2:35 PM

(Cross-posted with the YouTube Blog)

It’s well known that the mobile internet is huge and growing fast; what’s surprising is exactly how fast. According to a recent report, within 5 years more users will connect to the internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs. YouTube consumption on mobile devices has also grown considerably -- playbacks were up 160% in 2009 over the previous year. And we’re excited to announce that YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. This is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when we joined forces with Google in 2006.

We launched YouTube on mobile devices in 2007 with about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site (m.youtube.com). While this suddenly opened up the possibility to access videos on the go, our site, mobile browsers and the hardware had limitations that prevented the mobile experience from keeping up with YouTube on the desktop. Today, more than ever, we know that you want to be able to find and access your favorite videos wherever you are. That’s why we’ve been working hard to roll out an updated version of the mobile site.

Here's what's new about the new mobile site:

  • It's really fast.
  • The new user interface incorporates larger, more touch friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go.
  • It incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists,the ability to designate “favorite,” “like,” or “unlike” videos directly from your device.
  • As we make improvements to Youtube.com, you’ll see them quickly follow on our mobile site, unlike native apps which are not updated as frequently.
As the world continues to go mobile, we think this is a great improvement for users who want a more consistent YouTube across many devices, no matter where they are. We're launching in English only today, but will be rolling it out in other languages in the coming months. You can access the latest YouTube mobile site from your iPhone or Android browser. To learn more, visit m.youtube.com to check out the latest improvements and take a minute to watch this demo video:



23 comments:

Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

Unknown said...

I'm liking the new touch-friendly interface, but I'd like to have an easy way to access my subscriptions' new videos rather than the mix of suggested videos and subscriptions found in the "home" section.

Unknown said...

Is the video supposed to play within the browser on Android 2.1? It always launches the Youtube app for me. I think I previously set the app as the default with "Complete action using" but I don't know how to disable this. I tried going to "Settings -> Manage applications" but Youtube doesn't appear there.

Unknown said...

I figured out how to show the Youtube application, by going to "Filter", but it says that I do not have a default action set for Youtube.

Unknown said...

@Martin I don't believe it will play in the browser in 2.1...that would require full flash support. The "HTML5" is only referring to the webapp itself, not the videos themselves. Until 2.2 that is...

عادل said...

arabic support please :)

Unknown said...

@Mike Thanks, I didn't pay close enough attention to the demo video when it showed that it launched the external app. I thought that HTML5's video tag somehow may have let it play in the browser.

Craig said...

This doesn't work on iPhone 3G S with iOS4. The videos are all unclickable with a ban line on them. It doesn't matter if I'm on wifi or not.

Craig said...

I cleared my browsers cache and cookies and then the new mobile site worked.
Are you preparing for an Apple ban?
I just found out Google is a member of the CFR. I'm cutting back on trusting Google. It's a shame because I use everything Google.

Unknown said...

Not working for me on Nexus One with Froyo in reland. Is this just U.S. for now?

Raphael

Craig said...

Raphael clear your browsers cache and cookies and YouTube will start working.

John Navas said...

Video quality sucks on the T-Mobile myTouch 3G 3.5mm Jack.

Darsh... said...

Its amazing and so beautiful to watch video on YouTube now. Steve Jobs seems to be right in not letting flash work on apple platform. But google is doing things and transforming user experience smartly onto brower (where they have an edge over apple).. SMART GUYS!!!

Unknown said...

Is there any way to play an embedded video on a website through this new web app instead of opening the default YouTube app? I've been searching for a while but haven't found any answers. I'm on iOS4.

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Unknown said...

Very slick update to the mobile site but please support the Palm webOS browser. Palm's browser is webkit too and Palm's been championing HTML5 with webOS since Jan 2009!

Unknown said...

Maybe Google can clear up a few things about the new YouTube mobile.

First, they never said this was an HTML5 website, did they? Even though all the blogs are reporting that it is. When you look at the source code generated by going to m.youtube.com with a mobile browser, it appears that there is no HTML5 code.

Secondly, Flash support is NOT required to play the videos. I can play them on my Droid with or without Flash installed...but I'm on 2.2 which leads me to ...

Third, is this meant to work only on Froyo? People I know that are still on 2.1 report that they are forced to the native app to play, that it won't launch in the browser. Is that the way it's supposed to be?

whoadave said...

Is there any way I can find out what settings are being used to encode the 3gp files streaming over rtsp? I'm working on a mobile site that offers video demos, but no matter what I try, I cannot seem to get a decent looking stream using 3gp over rtsp, but Youtube seems to be doing excellent.

Chris said...

New site works and looks great from my old G1 running Android. Just wanted to let everyone know that the latest release of the Opera browser (out yesterday) doesn't play nice with the new layout and functionality.

Unknown said...

YouTube is a faster searching engine.i like to use YouTube in mobile internet.Its amazing and so beautiful to watch video on YouTube now.

Unknown said...

i love google mobile.. keep it up!

Craig said...

Except for the new mobile YouTube site all of the YouTube videos on other websites I visit all have a ban line going through them and are unplayable now. Videos on websites use to work on my iPhone 3G S. What happened?