Imagining the YouTube of the Future

What will watching video be like a few years from now? That's a question that we ask ourselves a lot here at YouTube. In a recent article in Forbes magazine, we shared a few ideas that we've been kicking around. We wanted to share them with you, too, as well as hear your ideas.

When pondering the future of video, these are some of the questions we ask ourselves:

• How long will people primarily use computers to interact with video? How quickly will they move to their televisions or mobile phones?

• What are new and better ways that will help people discover great videos to watch? What new recommendations can search provide? What about recommendations based on like-minded people? What are your friends and family watching?

• How might we allow people to organize YouTube for themselves? How can the experts in our community help us curate YouTube's massive collection?

In thinking about these questions, we've come to realize that YouTube's design needs to evolve to answer them. We want to find innovative and useful ways to surface recommendations to you, and we'll need to create the breakthrough tools that empower you to take center stage in this role.

The YouTube User Experience team uses storyboards to visualize ideas and kick off discussions about new products that will keep YouTube on the forefront of video technology. In the examples below, we used a nifty application called Comic Life that makes storyboarding fast and easy. These are snippets from two storyboards/scenarios that we used internally to talk about the YouTube of the future:

Those are just some of the ideas that we've been discussing. It's hard to predict the future, but it's one of the most fun and interesting parts of our jobs.

What do you think the future of video will hold? What do you want to see us do in one, two, or even five years? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Margaret Stewart, User Experience Manager, recently watched "Keyboard Cat Supports Michael Vick."