Following the tradition of our Google brethren,we’d like to share our blog highlights and thank you, our loyal blog readers, for making this the most successful year ever for the YouTube blog.
This is our 284th post of the year, which is 13% more than in 2008. In addition to more posts, we have more readers now — 79% more, to be exact. The number of unique visitors jumped from 7.7 million last year to 13.7 million in 2009.
We also launched three new blogs this year: the Biz Blog for partners and advertisers, a Spanish-language blog, and the Creator’s Corner blog for anyone who makes videos. And we finally moved onto to the Blogger platform, bringing us into the 21st century when it comes to blog technology.
Whew. It was a busy year but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Have a very happy New Year, thanks for reading, and see you in 2010!
It’s time again for our annual wrap-up of blogging at Google. You may have noticed 2009 marked our fifth year here on the Official Google Blog — our first post was in April 2004 — and it was our busiest year yet. This is our 423rd post of 2009 — a 15 percent increase over last year. We’re also pleased to note that a total of 14,493,472 readers stopped by this year, a 21 percent increase. You hail from all over: more than half of visitors are outside of the U.S. The other top countries are (in order) U.K., India, Canada, Germany and France.
What captured your attention this year? Here are the top 10 posts of 2009, by unique pageviews:
Introducing the Google Chrome OS – 2,591,794 unique pageviews (more than 12 percent of the year’s total). The announcement of our open source operating system received more than 4x the views of any other post.
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave – 639,225. Wave-mania struck after we introduced a new product for collaboration and communication at our Google I/O conference.
Here comes Google Voice – 357,084. We released a preview of this application to help you better manage your voice communications.
Email in Indian languages – 224,052. A transliteration feature in Gmail that makes it easier to type in Indian languages was a hit. More than one million readers of the blog in 2009 were from India — a 53 percent increase over 2008.
Google Apps is out of beta (yes, really) – 164,319. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk all lost their beta tags (in Gmail’s case, after five years!).
Now S-U-P-E-R-sized! – 155,196. A “small” change increasing the size of the Google search box got a lot of attention.
Introducing Google Public DNS – 143,122. We launched our public DNS resolver, which converts domain names into unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers.
We also developed a few different series of posts this year: one on the power of measurement, for people who want to improve the performance of their websites; a weekly series focused on search; and another on the latest in the world of Google Apps.
Beyond the blogs, in February we jumped head-first into the Twitterverse, starting our @google account with a geeky tweet. Since then, we’ve tweeted more than 1,000 times, and are grateful to have gathered two million or so followers. That puts us in the company of @algore and @ashsimpsonwentz, and (today, at least) just 65,000 or so followers behind a certain @ladygaga (although we’re pretty sure that gap is only going to grow — no way we can compete with her outfits). Around 75 other Google entities and teams have gotten into the Twitter act this year as well, so we built a directory to help you keep up with all the action. Twitter also was our biggest non-Google referrer to the blog in 2009, a clear sign of its rapid growth in popularity.
Thanks for sticking with us through all of our goings-on over the past 12 months. We look forward to having you back for more in 2010. In the meantime, happy New Year!
Posted by Emily Wood and Jordan Newman, Editors, Google Blog Team
Did
you know that we released more features in 2009 than in 2007 and 2008
combined? This made it the busiest year on record for the YouTube
product and engineering teams. Some of these launches, like support for 1080p, made sizable splashes, while others, like “trending topics” appearing at the bottom of the browse page,
went out with less fanfare. With so much going on, we wanted to pause
before the new year begins to review the things that hopefully made the
biggest impact on your overall YouTube experience:
Auto-Share – As part of our wider effort to integrate YouTube into the social and communication platforms you use every day, AutoShare automatically syndicates your YouTube activity to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader.
Auto-Speech Recognition – Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, coupled with YouTube’s captioning system, makes videos more accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired. This same speech recognition technology can create machine-generated captions, which can then be translated into 51 languages.
Mobile Website for Smartphones – Watching videos on — and uploading videos from — cell phones is more popular than ever. To meet this demand, we launched a new mobile website designed to make using YouTube on smartphones like the iPhone, G1 and Palm Pre a lot easier.
YouTube XL – YouTube XL
optimizes YouTube for large screens. In addition to offering larger
text and simplified navigation, XL has a continuous play feature,
allowing you to search for a topic, hit “play” and then kick back for
an uninterrupted viewing experience.
VEVO – VEVO.com
is a partnership that blends Google and YouTube’s technology with music
videos from a broad catalog of artists from Universal Music Group, Sony
Music and EMI. The site hopes to redefine the way people watch and
engage with music online, as well as change the way the digital and
music industries do business with each other.
Feather – Feather
is a stripped-down version of the page on which any video plays.
Without all but the basic features, the page loads more quickly and
videos play back faster. Give it a whirl in TestTube or click here.
3D- In July, one of our engineers used his free time to implement easier viewing options for 3D videos on YouTube. Here’s a brief overview video.
Real-Time Comment Search – In October, we released the ability to search YouTube comments in real-time.
The comment appears on a continuously updated results page, and
“trending topics” indicates the hottest topics of conversation on
YouTube at that particular moment.
Shows & Movies- In April, we rolled out a destination sporting hundreds of movies and thousands of full-length TV episodes. Offerings have included film classics like Taxi Driver, Ghostbusters and the Spaghetti Western Trilogy, as well as current TV shows from broadcasters like C4 and Channel 5 in the UK.
Which
of these features is your favorite? Please use the poll in the top
right corner of this blog to let us know what you’ve found to be most
useful in ‘09, or leave a comment below if there’s another feature that
had an important impact on your YouTube life.
Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, and John Harding, Engineering Manager
2009 was a fun year for us, and we hope, for you too. Here’s a month by month breakdown of new features and significant launches from 2009, with links to the blog posts announcing or explaining them. And if you haven’t yet, take a look at the Google Analytics YouTube channel, where you can see tons of tutorial videos on the new features.
A big thank you to our Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, who have helped advise us on our product roadmap and told us what you need to see in the product.
And, of course, we added the ability to post comments on our blog posts.
From our entire team, we hope that, wherever you are, you and yours had a safe New Year’s Eve and are looking forward to a happy, healthy, productive and data-driven 2010!
The images are grainy, often jerky and hard to follow (like most footage shot using hand-held cameras and cellphones), but the message is unmistakable: in the months since the disputed Iranian presidential election in June, the people of Iran have become fluent in the new language of citizen video reporting. What might have seemed an isolated moment immediately following the election, when we watched videos of Iranians marching, battling and even dying on the streets of Tehran, appears to have become an essential part of their struggle.
At YouTube, we have been watching week after week as new videos have appeared on the site within hours of every single protest or similar event reported from Iran in the past six months. Thousands of uploads have brought the fear and tension of these protests to YouTube, inviting millions of views around the world. It is as if the revolts that are taking place could not do so outside the eye of the camera.
Unlike traditional news footage from foreign correspondents (currently prohibited in Iran), these videos are the voice of the people — unfiltered, unedited and with a single, sometimes disturbing point of view. No professional film could capture the one-to-one feeling of watching an ordinary citizen’s images of unrest in his or her own country.
We are constantly amazed by the videos our community uploads, whether from their own backyards or the streets of a faraway land. Armed with only a camera and a means to reach the Internet, anyone can ask another to bear witness to their lives. Given the nature of the YouTube videos from Iran, we may want to turn away from some of the images we see, but we keep watching, knowing that we are seeing through the eyes of a people who have discovered the power of information — despite the often extreme measures their government is using to try to stop them.
We will continue to provide the platform for you to see what they see, hear their voices and learn about their struggles. And we encourage you to join the global conversation. Leave a comment, upload your own response video or share a moving moment with someone else.
The images are grainy, often jerky and hard to follow (like most footage shot using hand-held cameras and cellphones), but the message is unmistakable: in the months since the disputed Iranian presidential election in June, the people of Iran have become fluent in the new language of citizen video reporting. What might have seemed an isolated moment immediately following the election, when we watched videos of Iranians marching, battling and even dying on the streets of Tehran, appears to have become an essential part of their struggle.
At YouTube, we have been watching week after week as new videos have appeared on the site within hours of every single protest or similar event reported from Iran in the past six months. Thousands of uploads have brought the fear and tension of these protests to YouTube, inviting millions of views around the world. It is as if the revolts that are taking place could not do so outside the eye of the camera.
Unlike traditional news footage from foreign correspondents (currently prohibited in Iran), these videos are the voice of the people — unfiltered, unedited and with a single, sometimes disturbing point of view. No professional film could capture the one-to-one feeling of watching an ordinary citizen’s images of unrest in his or her own country.
We are constantly amazed by the videos our community uploads, whether from their own backyards or the streets of a faraway land. Armed with only a camera and a means to reach the Internet, anyone can ask another to bear witness to their lives. Given the nature of the YouTube videos from Iran, we may want to turn away from some of the images we see, but we keep watching, knowing that we are seeing through the eyes of a people who have discovered the power of information — despite the often extreme measures their government is using to try to stop them.
We will continue to provide the platform for you to see what they see, hear their voices and learn about their struggles. And we encourage you to join the global conversation. Leave a comment, upload your own response video or share a moving moment with someone else.
Is there one issue facing the world today that you feel passionate about? Have you always wanted to take your cause directly to people who have the power to do something about it, but lacked access to have your voice heard? Now is your chance to make your pitch – and win a spot at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where world leaders will gather to hear what you have to say about the issue that matters most to you.
There is just one week left to submit a video for the opportunity to go to Davos. Each year, heads of state, business leaders, and social entrepreneurs gather at the World Economic Forum to discuss the most critical challenges facing citizens and nations around the world. And this year, one of you will get direct access to a special panel of these leaders at the Forum, to let them know why your cause matters.
The submission deadline is Monday, January 4, 2010, and all videos should be no longer than three minutes. Speak clearly and from the heart. Five finalists will be selected by a judging panel comprised of Paolo Coelho, Arianna Huffington and Muhammad Yunus. These finalist videos will then go to public vote on January 8, with a winner announced on January 19.
This is the chance you’ve been waiting for… unprecedented access to the world’s most powerful leaders who can make a difference for your cause. Visit the Davos YouTube channel to submit your video and make your pitch to the world.
Why should trip planning be any more complicated than opening your browser and entering the name of your favourite city? Six months ago we launched City Tours on Google Labs with the goal of making vacation planning as easy as searching the web. After all, Google knows the top sights in many cities around the world and we’ve been providing directions on Google Maps for years, so Google Labs seemed to be the perfect way to test out a combination of these two capabilities, with our computing power thrown in to sift through the thousands of possibilities.
Though City Tours is still in Google Labs, the purpose was clear and the demo was popular, so we’ve continued to work on it over the past few months to take into account the hundreds of suggestions from users all across the globe. Now you’ll find several handy additions:
Show complete walking directions. Until now, we’ve simply estimated the travel time between destinations based on the distance between them. Today, we start providing complete pedestrian routing information for every step of your tour, taking road types, bridges and bodies of water into account just like a regular Google Maps walking directions search. We still try to minimise the time you spend walking and we still won’t recommend a visit to an attraction when we think it’s closed but, now, the suggested tours are a whole lot closer to reality.
Import a My Map as a tour – because we can’t always guess what you want to see! Maybe last time before you went on holiday you created a My Map of all the things you wanted to see when you got there. Now, next time you’re planning a trip, you can import that My Map into City Tours: we’ll try to schedule a visit to every feature in your map, just as if you had entered the city name into City Tours’ search box.
Alternatively, maybe the last time you came home after holiday you created a My Map of the best attractions you saw. If you’ve made your My Map public and listed, once a user has found it they can import it into City Tours with its link and re-live your tour, customised – of course – for the dates on which they’re visiting. In the mood for literature in the Big Apple? You’ll want to try out this walking tour of New York bookshops.
Finally, we’ve made a whole bunch of small user interface improvements both to help usability and make City Tours behave just a little more like the Google Maps site you’re used to.
We’re confident that these additions will make City Tours a whole lot more useful to a whole lot more people, although it should be noted that City Tours remains a Google Labs product and is still far from complete. We hope to continue tweaking and improving it over the coming months, continuing our goal of making planning a trip as easy as doing a Google search.
Posted by Trevor Johnston, Software Engineer, Google Zurich
From the Iran protests to the uprising of monks in Burma, YouTube has become a place where citizens can expose human rights violations and promote free expression. This month, we were excited to see many of you help the organizations that regularly combat injustice and abuse around the world, by creating a video for one of them through Video Volunteers.
Spurred by Morgan Freeman’s heartfelt call-out video and International Human Rights Day, which occurred earlier this month, you submitted videos on behalf of nonprofits working on issues like conflict minerals, the situation in Darfur and sex trafficking:
Today, the top three selections will appear on the YouTube homepage to raise awareness of several pressing human rights issues. We’re also featuring Morgan Freeman’s “volunteer” video for Amnesty International, which uses claymation to discuss the power of words in fighting injustice:
We’ll be back with another round of Video Volunteers in January and our spotlight issue will be the arts, so if you’re an arts organization who would like a volunteer to create a video for you, please fill out this form and your opportunity will be posted to the Video Volunteers channel.
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. – Ed.
Googlers are all about the holidays, and we’re always delighted to bring some extra holiday cheer to the web. Here are some of this year’s festive digital offerings for you.
Holiday Google doodles
As you likely noticed, the Google homepage has been adorned with a fun series of holiday postcards this week. From snowmen to festive palm trees, each doodle depicts a postcard with a fun seasonal scene. Did you miss any of them? Check out all five days at our holiday logo gallery.
NORAD tracks Santa
This week, in partnership with NORAD, we helped share the excitement of following Santa Claus’s travels with Google Maps and the Google Earth plugin. At the NORAD Santa site, children have been following the jolly journey from chimney to chimney across the globe. Don’t miss the fun YouTube video of Santa’s trip last year, as well as some great holiday games to play, at NORADSanta.org.
From all of us at Google, have a safe and happy holiday season. We’ll see you back here next year!
Posted by Andrew Schulte, Associate Product Marketing Manager
