14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube has just launched a very interesting new site dubbed YouTube Trends. The name is rather self-explanatory, the site does indeed feature the trending videos and topics of the moment. But it goes beyond this, there is also a Trends Dashboard that enables users to drill down and find the hottest videos of the moment in places around the US and in several countries.
One of the most popular features on Twitter is the Trending Topics section. It shows an instant glimpse of what the most discussed topics on the site are and people rely on them to check out the buzz on Twitter at any given point.
Google took this idea and applied it to videos. Considering the number of videos uploaded each minute, 35-hours worth, finding the onesthat you like and more importantly, the most popular or important videos of the moment is hard. YouTube Trends aims to provide an solution to this.
"Sometimes waiting for popular new videos to hit your inbox / chat window / wall / feed / mobile / pager / two-way radio can be frustrating. Sometimes keeping up with the latest YouTube fad can be hard to do," Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, writes.
"The idea for YouTube Trends started with our desire to find new ways of identifying the viral and newsworthy content people love to share and packaging it in an easy to digest format," he explains.
"We wanted one place to distill the videos people were sharing and discussing with their friends as well as understand what YouTube could teach us about our culture and current events," he added.
There are several key areas on the site. The most obvious ones are the Trending Topics and the Trending Videos sections. YouTube chose to have two categories since they won't always have the same entries. The trends are algorithmically generated, similar to how Twitter does it.
There is also a 4@4 section which highlights four videos that have proven particularly popular or important in the last day. Finally, there's the Trends Dashboard which provides a useful tool if you're curious what videos are popular in your part of the world.