

YouTube Leanback - SandB0x
http://www.youtube.com/leanback

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awongh
I feel like the the passive viewing experience is one area that's really been
lacking for web video.... this is a pretty good start. If any youtube product
guys are listening i'd like to see some 'curated' (sponsored?) channels....
that would be cool. Something to cut through all the junk- I would watch that.

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ryanjmo
Currently the top YouTube channels make around 10-30K a month from ads and
sponsorships (some much more). They put out really quality stuff. Just go look
at the top subscribed channels and you will find some really great video
creators. What your asking for already exists, it happened naturally as people
became more and more popular on YouTube.

I highly recommend this guy, he has over a million subscribers:
<http://bit.ly/b4aivv> and you should buy his iPhone app ;)

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awongh
I don't think that model of viewing is that compelling- first of all because
the channels are all kind of narrowly themed, second of all, it really is
mostly junk... first page for most subscribed and most viewed channels?
mostannoyingorange... case closed....

also, they don't cycle through the videos automatically (i.e., it's not
passive) -from one video to the next, how do you find other content to watch?
Most of the other videos I end up clicking on turn out to be video responses
and stuff like that.... I think this part of the youtube UX is pretty broken
if you're just browsing videos. Even if it was active you would want to be
able to click through to another video you want to see, but it doesn't work
this way.

I don't doubt that youtube is making money from their ads, but I was just
suggesting if they were to pay someone to curate their content they could
still make money from it.

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ryanjmo
<http://youtube.com/realannoyingorange> is hilarious, just ask one of his one
million fans... case closed...

And YouTube isn't the only ones making money from this, the video creators are
actually making 10-30K a month. From my experience working in this space
curated videos will never draw as much of a following as individual video
creators.

I was thinking about passive video watching today and the thing is I don't
think that will ever really take off on the Internet. People are too busy when
they are online, and sitting back and consuming content does not deliver the
same 'buzz' as switching quickly from one topic to another. Our start-up
delivers video content to users from Channels they love, intermittently
throughout the day through Facebook/Email/phones, etc. This seems to be a much
more realistic future for video content on the web. It seems to fit much more
naturally into the experience of being online, than the idea that a user will
sudden stopping 'browsing' and start leaning back. IMHO Leaning back in
general may be dying.

You should really try to find a YouTube channel you like and start following
along. Unless you do you will never really understand where (I believe) the
future of video is going. If you didn't like my previous selection, try this
guy he is great: <http://www.youtube.com/user/KassemG>

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awongh
alright, well, some people may find really annoying orange funny. In general
though I see more of this type of irreverent content on youtube than anything
else... -where the point of the thing is to make non-sensical jokes... I can
throw in my elitist intellectual HN ideals here and wish for more substantive
content...

I also don't think that passive consumption of content is going anywhere. To
take music as a parallel, radio is dead, but pandora is really taking off. I
think you just have to be smart about how your content is presented and in
what context. I would think there's plenty of room for youtube type sites to
bleed over into where tv is now. There's no real reason really annoying orange
couldn't be presented in a passive context. I might even watch it and think it
was ok, but there's no way I would willingly click on it and watch the whole
thing, let alone more than one of their videos. That's the problem with
channels, and content discovery on the internet in general- You're asked to
dive deep too soon, or when you only have a passing interest.

The fact that it's on the "internet" or that people are "online" shouldn't
really matter. All devices are going to be hooked up to your wifi/home network
soon, if they aren't already. (e.g. netflix, etc.) Not to mention
mobile/tablets. We'll see if google can do something with googletv.

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zweben
I wasn't expecting this to really hold my attention, but I ended up watching
for 25 minutes the first time I tried it.

I just hope they add a way to add videos to the favorites and view the
original youtube page for a video. Also a bit annoying that you can't control
it with the mouse, but they'll probably fix that.

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Robin_Message
This redirects to [http://www.youtube.com/?ytsession=vjlEKpY0_U2hKWQ_KC--
4GLSYy...](http://www.youtube.com/?ytsession=vjlEKpY0_U2hKWQ_KC--
4GLSYyeexKi_t6bEvsJJAPA20l10nWEcBn_fpRE3pz7fcSP-
ZdcT3PqyCC68Pz9yPHDVp4H-VRAa6JI_H9FqctOakgaVE25tszJy5WBivTa5YIH-
ZpsfmrVCQIa0sBvlTkGHkeRhV0VseBxDSima85sIqV-n9NcLrFWlAYUaHdkVY3PIT3wScql7ppvC9GA0mGVl9FgNTBa6nOf2WdOnbfY3HPRnkjm38lLEEl6WjQ0TEMS1hOSIj64svuFFxbrfUWdJlyWg-1MdgDadrPuM8nc)
for me, with the helpful message "Your account has been permanently disabled."
at the top of their homepage. So, what am I missing?

EDIT: Ah, I get it. Google connected a throwaway youtube account to my google
account a while back. I disconnected them, which google interprets as
"permanently disabled," which is not that same thing as "delete this link
permanently" in my mind!

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alanh
Very confusing at first, and it seems impossible to share videos. But I like
the idea.

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samratjp
Not a bad start at all. This could work very well with Kinect if MSFT ever
decides to let in YouTube.

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Synthetase
The best thing about it is the lack of ads.

Does anyone know if this is done in HTML5?

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zweben
It's Flash. Easy way to check, by the way, is to right click on it. If it's
Flash it'll say "About Adobe Flash Player 10".

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tansey
Is there a volume control? I couldn't find it.

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JMiao
yes, the volume control for your television.

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res0nat0r
Very nice.

