YouTube announced today that its Channel Design 2.0 will come out of beta and officially take effect site-wide on July 15th. (UPDATE – See the end of this post for updated details on the now delayed site-wide release of the re-design.) Users have been able to try out the new design since April 16th, and YouTube’s Product Management team has been sharing progress and gathering feedback on their dedicated channels beta blog.
Apparently, they’ve tweaked things and worked out enough of the bugs that they’re now ready to roll it out for everyone. (And as of July 15th, you won’t even have a choice.)
But hey, while change can be uncomfortable at first, this is in many ways good news. YouTube’s purpose in doing this is to allow us to truly make our YouTube profiles/Channels our online video hubs on the Net — the defacto “video homepage” for our brands, if you will.
For a brief explanation of what additional new features (and benefits!) the re-designed YouTube Channels will offer, as well as how to go about customizing your Channel, check out the video posted by the Product Management team:
And yes, it is pretty cool that people will no longer have to click off of your profile page to enjoy more of your content — or even to interact with it…
It will finally truly be like your own Channel — not just a “yeah, here’s a listing of what all I can offer, but to consume or engage with any of it, you’ll have to click over to another page where you’ll be introduced to tons of other related, but very likely COMPETING videos, which will likely distract you and ultimately lead you over to someone else’s place where they can list all their content” page.
Did you get that? Because that’s what the old Channel design had us working with: more like a TV Schedule than the actual Television Set (if you can bend your brain to consider such an old media analogy). 
Think about it. Now, once you lure that bait onto your Channel, you can keep them there as long as your video offerings allow for it — and without any distractions. Pretty nifty. And that’s just the start of it.
More next week…
Meanwhile, if you haven’t already switched over to the Beta version of YouTube Channel 2.0, it can now be done by clicking Edit Channel when logged in to your account, and then visiting the Channel Design page. Note that your custom backgrounds may require some slight tweaking to work with the new re-design.
Special Announcement: I have delayed my YouTube Marketing and Video Optimization Tips Part 3 blog post until next week, as I’m fortunate enough to be packing up and moving house this week. (So much fun — especially in 90-degree weather…not!) Even taking time to write this little newsflash has had me pulled away from my bubblewrap for far too long. Back to my boxes…
Look for Part 3 by Tuesday of next week (or whenever the cable guy finally shows up to get my Internet connected). Or simply revisit Part 2.
Until then,
~JP
Updated June 25th 10:42 a.m. – This post was written late last night right when I saw the news posted on YouTube’s blog. I got to thinking this morning about YouTube’s decision to make these changes mandatory for everyone. While I see the changes as a great benefit to users…and yes, while I feel the re-design does tend to have a cleaner look that puts more focus on the actual video content, I still can’t help but compare this to what MySpace did when they offered a 2.0 version of their profile design: They gave users an OPTION – a choice as to whether or not they wanted to participate and make the switch to the new design.
Should YouTube maybe consider giving its users a choice? What do you think?
Updated July 14th 10:01 a.m. - YouTube has announced on it’s Channel Re-Design Beta Blog that they have changed the date on which they will move all remaining YouTube Channels over to the new design. They say on the blog that they “realized [they] still have a few bugs and things left on the to-do list.”
As for when the official site-wide roll-out will take place, they are still unsure. But they do say that they’ll announce it “no less than 2 weeks before it happens – and yes, it’s still coming this summer.” (While yes, I still think they need to give users the option. But we will make do.) For more information on the delay of the official Channel re-design release, see this post from YouTube.