YouTube Collections

Here's a very cool YouTube feature you should try: collections. It's a simple way to group multiple subscriptions, so you can quickly check the latest videos related to a topic. Let's say you subscribe to the Google channel, the Chrome channel and the Nexus channel. You can create a Google collection that includes all these channels.

"To make a brand new collection or edit an existing one, visit the Subscription Manager, which you can navigate to by clicking Manage subscriptions from the left side of your YouTube page. Click the 'Create new collection button'. Name your collection and select the channels you'd like to include in your collection," explains YouTube. Use the search feature to find the right channels.

Collections are placed at the top of the subscriptions list in the YouTube sidebar, so it's easy to find them. They have a small arrow button that lets you expand the collection and see each subscription. If a subscription is added to collection, you'll no longer see that subscription in the sidebar without expanding collections. It's a great way to organize your subscriptions.

Gmail's Quick Action Button for YouTube Messages

A few weeks ago, Gmail started to show a small button next to some email messages from YouTube. Click the "view video" button and you can watch the video in a new tab without even reading the message. This is one of the first built-in Gmail actions.

This only works for notifications received when a YouTube channel uploads a new video. If you visit this page when you're signed in, you can check "Email me about new uploads" next to your favorite channels.

{ Thanks, Yu-Hsuan Lin. }

Watch Now: a New YouTube Experiment

YouTube tests a time-saving feature that suggests videos when you're typing a query. When there's a video that strongly associated with your search, YouTube places a link to the video above the search suggestions list and highlights it with this label: "watch now".

For example, when you type the first 4 characters from [evolution of dance], YouTube realizes that you want to watch this video.

For some reason, YouTube suggests videos even when it's not obvious what you want to watch. For example, typing "concerto in" triggers 2 suggestions.

There's also this:

Here's how you can enable the experimental feature. If you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+:

1. open youtube.com in a new tab

2. load your browser's developer console:

* Chrome - press Ctrl+Shift+J for Windows/Linux/ChromeOS or Command-Option-J for Mac

* Firefox - press Ctrl+Shift+K for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-K for Mac

* Opera - press Ctrl+Shift+I for Windows/Linux or Command-Option-I for Mac, then click "Console"

* Safari - check this article

* Internet Explorer - press F12 and select the "Console" tab.

3. paste the following code which changes a YouTube cookie:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=k2M7rSHFQi4; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

4. press Enter and close the console.

{ Thanks, Long Nguyen. }

Google Mine

Google prepares a new service that's called Google Mine. It's integrated with Google+ and it's a way to keep track of the items you own or you'd like to have and share some of them with your circles. Right now, the service is tested internally at Google.

"Google Mine lets you share your belongings with your friends and keep up to date with what your friends are sharing. It enables you to control which of your Google+ Circles you share an item with. It also lets you rate and review the items, upload photos of them and share updates on the Google+ Stream where your friends get to see and comment on them."

Google Mine lets you organize the things you own, use, wish for, and more: gadgets, clothing, electronics, DVDs, cars, bikes or anything!

It also enables social interactions around them with your Circles using Google+:

* Catalog your belongings, track what you have
* Review your belongings for your friends to see
* Control who sees what, track conversations
* Send requests to borrow or try out friends' stuff
* Share stuff you wish for, get recommendations
* Share stuff you are giving away, find takers
* Follow, browse, search stuff that friends share

There's also an Android app, currently available in Bazaar, Google's internal Play Store.

Here are some messages used by Google Mine. As you can see, the service lets you enter a lot of information about your objects. For example, you can change the status of an object to "lent", "given away", "got it back", "lost it", "had in the past". You can post videos about the object, write reviews, add it to a wishlist and maybe others can buy it using Google Shopping. You can also check popular items and the items others have shared.

After adding an object, Google shows this message: "You have just started using Google Mine and have added some items to your collections. Now, you can let your friends know by posting to your Google+ Stream."

You can ask other people to send you their objects: "You are starting a request for an item. Google Mine will enable you to communicate on this request with the receiver by creating a post to your Google+ Stream, visible only to you and the receiver."

You can also:

* Search for stuff people have shared on Mine.
* See instant matches for your stuff, and the people in your circles.
* Use What's Hot to follow what others are sharing.
* Organize and share your stuff as lists.

Another cool feature: a 3D viewer called Katamari that uses WebGL to shows your objects.

Some icons used by Google Mine:

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

A Google Reader Puzzle From 2007

Back in 2007, Google accidentally made public an internal video about Google Reader. The video included a lot of useful information about Google Reader, the kind of details you'll never find in a Google post or presentation.

I'm trying to solve the puzzle and find the number of Google Reader users from 2007. Here are the hints:

1. At that time, Google Reader crawled 8 million feeds.

2. Two thirds of the feeds had only one subscriber, one third of the feeds had more than one subscriber.

3. Google Reader used 10TB for storing all the raw data.

4. The rate of user growth = the rate of growth for the number of feeds.

5. The index size grew 4% every week.

6. 70% of the Google Reader traffic came from Firefox (at that time, Firefox's market share was about 15%).

7. Gmail and orkut were the only Google applications that had a bigger number of pageviews/user than Google Reader.

8. The main Google Blog had 100,000 subscribers and this number includes all the subscribers from iGoogle, Reader and orkut.

So, at that time, only 2.6 million feeds indexed by Google Reader had more than one subscriber. Probably many of the feeds that had only one subscriber were used by other Google services powered by Google Reader's backend (orkut, Blogger widgets, Google Spreadsheets, Ajax API) or they were Google News/Blog Search feeds. It makes sense to assume that the number of Google Reader users was lower than the number of feeds with more than one subscriber.

Here's a chart from 2010 that shows Google Reader's user growth:



And something else from 2010: "the average Reader user reads about 105 items a day".

It's probably worth distinguishing Reader as a service from Reader as a platform.

The Most Well-Connected Google Service

Many people think that Google Reader could've been more successful if Google promoted it more. The truth is that Google Reader has been the service that connected to the biggest number of Google services. No other Google benefited from so many service integrations.

Here's an incomplete list. Start counting:

1. a link to Reader was displayed in Gmail's inbox when there was no mail

2. for many years, Google Reader could be found in the main navigation bar, next to Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs

3. Google Reader was the first Google service that worked offline and the first Google service that used Google Gears, back in 2007



4. Google Reader integrated with Google Social Search, a feature that allowed you to restrict results to the pages written by your friends or people you follow.



5. iGoogle integrated with Google Reader when it started to add support for canvas view. Maximize a feed gadget and you get the Google Reader interface.



6. Blogger's Following feature was powered by Google Reader. "The blogs you follow in Blogger have been added as subscriptions in Google Reader. Subscriptions can be managed in Reader without affecting your following list in Blogger."



7. Listen, Google's podcast manager app for Android, used Google Reader to store subscriptions.

8. Google Alerts integrated with Google Reader, so you could subscribe to feeds instead of receiving email notofcations.

9. Back in 2008, Google's mobile transcoder displayed the site's feeds at the top of the page and linked to Google Reader.

10. Google Reader was the only Google product with an interface optimized for Nintendo Wii.

11. Google Currents, launched in 2011, allowed you to import your Google Reader subscriptions.

12. Google Buzz's commenting feature was integrated with Google Reader.



13. When Bloglines was discontinued in 2010, Google Reader's team encouraged users to switch to Reader. The blog post includes a graph of Reader users over time.

14. The Google Groups redesign from 2010 was inspired by Google Reader.

15. Google bought FeedBurner to monetize Google Reader and launched AdSense for Feeds.

16. Back in 2007, Google Reader made shared items available to Google Talk contacts and many people complained about this.

17. Google's Power Readers feature from 2008 allowed you to "track the news sites and blogs Barack Obama and John McCain read" using Google Reader. It was a clever way to promote Google Reader. This feature was expanded to "include journalists, techies, fashion critics, foodies and more".

18. Google Toolbar for IE allowed you to subscribe to feeds using iGoogle or Google Reader.

19. Google Blog Search still has this link below the list of search results page: "Subscribe to a blog search feed for [query] in Google Reader". Google News had a similar link.

20. Google Spreadsheets has a special function for importing feeds that was initially called GoogleReader. Now it's called ImportFeed.

21. Google TV Queue uses Google Reader to manage subscriptions.

22. Google Reader was Google's infrastructure for feeds and the technology was used by iGoogle, orkut, Gmail's web clips, Blogger widgets, Google Spreadsheets and the Ajax API.

I'm sure you can find other examples of services that integrated with Google Reader. I didn't include all the third-party apps and services that used the unofficial Google Reader API. As you can see, Reader was an important part of the Google ecosystem and Google did promote the service in many ways.

AdSense's Ping Pong Easter Egg

If you log in to the Google AdSense site and mouse over the "10" banner from the lower-left corner for a few seconds, Google will start a retro Ping Pong game. Google celebrates 10 years of AdSense and this is just a small gift. "AdSense has helped over two million partners grow their businesses in the last 10 years," says Google.

{ Thanks, Mark. }