14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube, like all other Google products, evolves quickly and is constantly getting updated, tweaked or changed. There are so many changes that YouTube only announces the smaller ones several at a time. In the latest batch of updates, YouTube revealed some Google+ features, new options for channel owners and a new layout for items on the homepage or in the Channel feeds.
One small but obvious new feature is the ability to advertise your presence on Google+ and link to either a page or a profile from your YouTube channel page. The site already enabled users to link to their Twitter or Facebook profiles, so the addition makes sense.
That said, it's not much towards Google+ integration, though there have been some moves in that direction previously, for example by surfacing videos from your Google+ feed on the YouTube homepage feed.
"You can now share videos and playlists in your Channel Feed by posting a Channel Bulletin. When you’re on your Feed tab you’ll see a box 'Post to Feed,' where you can enter a comment and add a link to share a video or a playlist," YouTube explained another change.
"When you’ve posted the bulletin, it will show up in your Channel Feed with your comment below the video. Viewers who are subscribed to your channel will be notified when you post to your feed in their homepage feed," it added.
YouTube has also updated the way it displays events in the homepage or channel feeds. The layout of the entries has been changed, the title is bigger and clearer and the various elements, like when the even occurred, who is it linked to and so on have been changed to make them easier to spot.
Finally, the Annotations Editor has gotten some new features, like more background colors for the video annotations, new timeline and even a new annotation type, which acts as a label for an area of the video.