New York — In a novel way of settling the dispute between which viral videos are the most entertaining? A laughing baby or a talking dog? Google’s YouTube team and its Google Research team have joined hands to launch YouTube Slam, an interactive video-discovery tool that randomly spits out two videos at time for one-on-one battles. Public voting determines the winners.
Well, thanks to a joint effort by the folks at YouTube and Google Research, this pestering brainteaser they are calling it an experiment, can now be answered with absolute certainty, and a way for YouTube users to discover the next “Charlie Bit My Finger”.
Image Source: (ZDNet)
According to the YouTube official blog, YouTube Slam is the latest video discovery experiment it created in partnership with Google Research. Empowering the audience with an impressive feature that pits one clip against another and lets viewers decide which is tops.
YouTube Slam is conceived to get users to stumble upon content they might not otherwise see while surfing the site. The video-sharing site describes Slam as a “place for discovering talented amateur singers, the most adorable clips and the craziest videos on YouTube.” Users can play with Slam in five categories: bizarre, comedy, cute (see image below), dance and music.
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“Watch these collection of videos and vote for your favorite. Videos are rated based on your votes, and the best videos are featured on the slam leaderboard,” Google software engineer Tomas Izo noted in a blog post.
So what is in it for you? When voting in a battle, this new service lets you to earn points for choosing the video that is already the more popular of the two contestants, so you can see how you stack up against other players at the end of each week. It is a fascinating development since we do not typically see these kinds of simple gaming mechanics used to motivate people into using a new Google service.
Freaked-out baby versus fainting goats. Sounds like a close call. (Credit: Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)
In a random test of YouTube Slam, it has been noticed that some controversial videos (i.e. ones with racial splutters and copyright infringements). YouTube appears to be addressing this issue with a “Flag as Inappropriate” button next to each voting button. The video pool for the categories will be repopulated each week, so offensive or infringing videos might be weeded out during that process.
Apparently, YouTube Slam appears like a fun way to aimlessly waste some time during the day. However, it is in fact helping Google and YouTube create more value among its user-generated videos, not to mention boost subscriber numbers for active YouTube channels.
In the meantime watch below some fantastic clips from YouTube…
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