14 DAY TRIAL // Most people use YouTube in a rather straightforward way, they watch the videos that get passed to them and maybe search for a new movie trailer or a popular music video and that's it. But for those more involved in the process the service transforms entirely and can be a lot more social than at a first glance. One of the ways in which users can be more engaged is through subscriptions enabling them to keep up with their favorite creators on YouTube. The subscription feature has proven quite popular, according to YouTube, which prompted the site to update the feature adding several requested features.
"The subscription system delivers videos from content creators to eager viewers and has become such an essential part of YouTube that that ‘subscribe’ button is clicked over 1 million times every day," Brian Glick, product manager at YouTube, wrote.
"That's a lot -- which is why we're especially focused on improving the reliability, usefulness and transparency of subscriptions. First off, you've told us that you want ways to message your subscribers. Now, the bulletins you write on your channel will appear on your subscribers' homepages, in their 'Recent Activity' module."
This feature comes in very handy and it should really help the video makers reach out to their audience more directly. With the attached short messages, creators can describe the video or may write something to lure in the crowds. The text blurbs only show up for people who subscribed to a channel after September 2009, for some reason. The others can enable the bulletins by editing their subscription settings for each individual subscription and selecting the choose "Subscribe to all videos uploaded, rated, favorited, and commented on" option.
Another new feature is related to the subscription tool and will enable uploaders to keep track of how their video is doing with a new metric, which indicates how many people from their subscribers actually got the video. Finally, users will be able to customize their subscription and remove the videos they've already seen or aren't interested in.