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August 4, 2012

YouTube's Topic-Centric Homepage Experiment

YouTube continues to test new homepage interfaces focused on popular topics. YouTube's topic pages look like channels, but they're automatically generated by YouTube using videos that are related to a topic.

The homepage also shows videos from popular channels. All the links that start with "YouTube -" send you to topic pages for things like "Olympic weightlifting", "Gymnastics", "Driving under the influence", "James Bond Film Series" or "Chick-fil-A". Click "more" to see more videos from the channel or topic page.





The new UI experiment is very similar to the "carousel" interface I've mentioned last month. It only works when you're not logged in and YouTube redirects you to a new page: youtube.com/lohp.

Here's how you can try the latest YouTube experiment. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open youtube.com in a new tab, sign out, then load:

* Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac)
* Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac)
* Opera's Dragonfly (Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac)
* Safari's Web Inspector (how to do that?)
or
* Internet Explorer's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab)

and paste the following code, which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=9UnXBzJIHDc; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Then press Enter and close the console. Go to youtube.com/lohp to see the experimental interface.

Update: There's also an experiment that redirects users to the "videos" page, which shows popular videos from various categories.



{ via Techno-Net. }

5 comments:

  1. what you say in your update,is false, that page existe since more that year, most popular video, and recommendation for every topic! it what happen when you tap "Browse"!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think there's something false in this post because I've actually checked everything. If you're referring to the last paragraph, what's new is that YouTube redirects you to the "browse" page when you visit the homepage. I didn't claim that the page is new.

      Delete
  2. Can we have something that shows trending videos in particular country? Pardon me if that function already exists. Coz I've been looking for trending Indian videos but couldn't find relevant results, so asking

    ReplyDelete
  3. Youtube's home page just abruptly changed for me to a *mood* wall interface - where I could browse video thumbnails by selecting a mood (Creative, Brilliant, Epic, Strange, etc.) A running History of my thumbnail choices appeared as text links at the bottom of the home page. It seemed far too primitive an interface for a complex site like Youtube. Since I was *not* logged into my Google account at the time, I am wondering if I just got hacked (DNS hijacked, spoofed, account break in, etc.) Is there an Youtube experiment like this going on right now?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alright I got a new youtube interface. To enable it you have to Be Signed Out and type in(Without the quotes) "document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=NkqBDupucDg; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload()." Then you will see the new interface.The link is still the http://www.youtube.com/lohp, but it looks different than how it looked before.

    ReplyDelete

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