Hackday Yields Easier Way of Sharing Private Videos

A couple of weeks ago we quietly launched a new and easier way to share private videos: now you can generate a special URL for your private video and send it to up to 25 people, who, assuming they're logged in to YouTube, just have to click to view. This should make it a lot easier for your technology-challenged relatives to watch that video of baby's first steps without having to share it with the whole world.

A neat thing about this feature was that it was an outcome of a recent "hackday" here at YouTube. Hackdays are similar in spirit to "20% time" -- the amount of time in a week engineers at Google/YouTube are encouraged free think and innovate on projects they're passionate about. These efforts allow us to focus on launching smaller features that aren't on our official roadmaps but that we hope are still worthwhile for our users. Anyway, this hackday came with donuts, which were delicious and way too tempting for me to resist. I also had a strong personal motivation for figuring this out: I'm in a hip-hop dance group, and the troupe wanted to share practice videos without going through the process of becoming Friends on YouTube.

Even without any official announcement (until this post, that is!), uptake and usage of this feature has been strong. Here you can see the growth of private-videos-per-day using friend-to-friend sharing versus the new URL-sharing:

So test it out: go here and click on Edit on any one of your videos. Scroll down to "Broadcasting and Sharing Options," and you should see the privacy settings there. Click on Private to unlock the different ways of sharing the video, including the option to generate a limited-access URL. You can find out more about private videos in this Help Center article.

Mike Lambert, Software Engineer, recently watched a friend's private video.

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Warner Music Comes Back to YouTube

Music Licensing: It's complicated. Let's face it. But today all of that is beside the point: we are happy to announce that Warner Music Group (WMG)'s artists are returning home to YouTube. Under this new, multi-year global agreement, you will be able to discover, watch and share Warner music on the site. The partnership covers the full Warner catalog and includes user-generated content containing WMG acts.

With Warner on board, we now have artists from all four of the major music labels & publishers together with hundreds of indie labels and publishers on our platform. Warner will also be able to sell their own ad inventory and will use our Content ID technology to claim and monetize user-generated videos uploaded to YouTube by Warner Music fans. The partnership is based on a revenue share generated from the ads on the videos, and this makes good business sense for everyone involved: artists and labels can make money from their videos and the YouTube community gets to enjoy them.

But enough talk... let's get back to the rock. Warner's videos will begin appearing on YouTube in the near future.

Chris Maxcy, Director of YouTube Partner Development

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YouTube Musicians Launch a Label

We love to brag about successful projects that happen in our community, and so when we heard about DFTBA Records, the label that's all about acts that rose up on YouTube, run by YouTube stalwarts/songwriters Alan Lastufka (fallofautumndistro) and Hank Green (vlogbrothers), we just knew this had to be the subject of a Music Tuesday spotlight. Thus, on the homepage today is a DFTBA showcase, including a premiere of "Live on the Internet" from comedy duo Rhett & Link (cameo alert! a certain rapper appears in the video). You can also hear Hank and Alan talk about why they started DFTBA -- which, by the way, stands for "don't forget to be awesome" -- and experience a taste of their own music.

To date, DFTBA Records has released 10 CDs from YouTube stars like Dave Days, Venetian Princess, and Rhett & Link, and sales have surpassed $100,000. They operate as an independent distribution network, managing digital sales, CD production and (soon) merchandise for popular users like Michael Buckley. So if you're a talented YouTube user with an original song to sing, you may want to check out their site for more details on how to participate...and be even more awesome.

Michele Flannery, YouTube Music, recently favorited "Wildbirds & Peacedrums - My Heart"

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The Facebook Challenge: Day 60 - The End!

We talked trash about giving ourselves two months to get more fans on Facebook than some well-known celebs, and though we're now totaling 3.65 million fans and have gained nearly 600K since embarking upon this journey, we simply could not catch up to Adam Sandler (3.69M), let alone Lady Gaga (4.02M), Will Smith (4.45M), Megan Fox (4.91M), or Vin Diesel (6.31M). Sigh.

But it's OK! Something good is coming out of this: as penance for our hubris, we asked our Facebook fans to choose which nonprofits should appear on our homepage today, in the first-ever spotlight determined by our Facebook followers. Over 1,800 of them voted on a list of nonprofits with great videos; nearly a third of Facebook voters chose charity:water, whose commendable use of YouTube and social media in general has been well documented. The rest of the votes shook out as so:

We're pleased to be featuring the top 4 winners on the homepage today. It's made the bitter pill of defeat a whole lot easier to swallow.

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits Manager, recently watched "George Clooney Wants to Hear From You."

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