San Francisco — In an attempt to expand its recently opened Google+ for businesses, Google’s popular video-sharing site YouTube is now experimenting with a new dashboard and a gray makeover keenly inspired by its mentor, are already showing up for a few select users, which highlights elements of the company’s Google+ social media network, reports TheNextWeb.
YouTube’s probably a pretty big and, despite being the most popular online video service in the world, YouTube’s current website design is not truly engaging compared to other streaming video sites. So, Google is trying to do something about that with a new and very pretty redesign, just a few weeks after Google Reader got the same treatment.
While the changes are not that enormous, but as you can see in some leaked screenshot below, does show the new design is heavily influenced by Google+ integration, plus a few other tweaks as well.
The new design is focused around heavier Google+ integration and organizing all of your feeds and subscriptions into something more manageable than a face slap full of thumbnails every time you visit the homepage. This move should take Google one step closer towards extending the social media platform more heavily into each of its products.
Also, an emphasis on user subscriptions and channels you follow are organized into a left sidebar, which makes it easier to see videos that are shared from people within your social circles on Google+. In addition, considering YouTube’s investment in original content, this could be a better way to keep users watching while retaining viewer loyalty.
In the future, when you log on to YouTube you will be surprised to see a long list of videos that people within your Google+ circles have shared. No, it is not exactly revolutionary, but it does depicts that Google is committed to making Google+ the most common way for people to share stuff on the internet, not to mention it will help cut through the immense clutter that YouTube users have to endure now.
Moreover, the new Google-plus-focused design also constitutes more sizing options to videos, makes recommended content pop out when clicked and includes a new favicon (the little icon in your web browser bar next to the URL).
YouTube Redesign Highlights:
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Deeper Google+ integration shows off YouTube content your Circles have shared to Google+, letting you surf user-recommended videos from people you might actually care about.
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New left-column dashboard sorts your Subscriptions and more into easily-clickable sections, including featured videos and recommended content categories.
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Homepage content will be displayed in a single column, putting a focus on larger preview images for videos.
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A slight color scheme tweak (new gray background) highlights content.
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The “fullscreen” button in actual YouTube videos will receive a more user-friendly update, giving viewers the option to shrink, expand or, yes, fullscreen the video.
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Recommended video content pops out when clicked, allowing you to easily exit to where you last were before clicking after viewing.
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Clicking the YouTube logo on the top left of the site will lead to http://www.youtube.com/guide.
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YouTube’s favicon will also be switched out for an updated version.
These are the most apparent changes, though it is possible we may have missed some key elements. Besides, its visual style fits in with the rest of Google’s recent redesigns and assuming the new look tests well among those with access, it is likely you will soon be seeing the following changes.