14 DAY TRIAL // Google is not one for big releases and all of its services and products get updated gradually without much fanfare. This means that it's constantly improving, but it also means that it's hard to keep up with the changes. Thankfully, YouTube has decided to make a round-up of the recent changes and new features to be introduced and it's actually quite a list, with new things like “friend suggestions” and “trending topics,” but also tweaks like “sticky hq” or a new way of viewing more comments.
The feature touted the most is one introduced a couple of weeks ago, the new 'recommended friends' list, which now shows up on users' homepages. It makes use of their email addresses to link them together and there will be Gmail integration coming soon. Another change that should make for better social networking on YouTube is the new way activity subscriptions work, as they will now notify users of any public activity their friends make, like comments or favorites, not just new uploads.
Also created to help with the social engagement, there is now a new way of seeing more comments on videos, which YouTube bills as “effortless,” with a “more comments” link that will add ten more comments to the list without loading a new page. Taking a page right out of Twitter's playbook, YouTube is introducing Trending Topics, which will now show up at the bottom of the “browse pages.” The site is just experimenting with the feature, but, if it proves successful, it plans to have a greater roll-out and possibly a dedicated page.
On the functionality side, YouTube has made a small, but possibly very useful, change, as choosing to watch a video in HQ is now a “sticky” option, meaning that it will persist across different videos. Also, for longer videos, playback will resume from where you left off if you closed the window at some point, but only if the playback has passed the one-minute mark and there are more than three minutes left in the video.