YouTube is testing a new Explore tab to help you find more videos you’ll enjoy
YouTube loves it when you watch videos. Without video creators, however, there wouldn’t be any videos for you to watch. This means that YouTube loves its video creators and wants to help them succeed. A recent blog post from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki laid down this pledge recently, and the video sharing platform has started to put those words into action. YouTube is currently testing an Explore tab on iOS to help put video creators in touch with new users.
The new Explore tab will include new videos and channels based on previously watched videos. YouTube felt that the new tab was needed as the current recommended videos were coming up short and creators weren’t happy. Fresh content from new creators wouldn’t make it onto user’s recommended videos, meaning it was always the more established creators who were having their content promoted. If you watched a video, you’d often just be recommended other videos from the same creator.
The new Explore tab wants to go further. According to YouTube product manager Tom Leung in a recent YouTube video:
“Explore is designed to help you be exposed to different kinds of topics, videos or channels that you might not otherwise encounter, but they’re still personalized.”
So if you watch a video about an action camera, you might then be recommended videos about snowboarding, scuba diving, or drones. There’ll also be a Trending section so that users discover which videos are trending across YouTube at any given moment.
For now, the explore tab is only a test that will go out to 1% of YouTube users on iOS. It represents a step in the direction for the video hosting platform, which has seen a lot of problems over the last year regarding inappropriate videos being recommended to kids. If YouTube can crack this and put users in touch with better content, it could be well on the way to keeping creators happy while also regaining trust with its user base. Only time will tell.
