YouTube will now highlight videos’ “most replayed” parts in its web player and mobile apps. The feature was previously functional as an experiment for YouTube Premium subscribers but launched for all users.
You’ll be able to determine the most popular parts of a video from a graph that appears behind its progress bar.
Communicates YouTube: “If the graph is high, then that part of the video has been replayed often. So you can utilize the graph to find and watch those moments quickly.”
Pretty simple! But, it’s interesting to consider how this might split viewers’ attention — or, indeed, steer the creators’ work, giving them yet another signal to identify precisely what viewers like to see (an aspect of the forum that some YouTubers say creates undesirable pressure).
The company is announcing the feature as a component of a package of updates — some new, some not — that effectively work to splice up longer videos into more effortless and accessible chunks. These include a new way to twist parts of videos that launched last year but weren’t formally reported.
YouTube is a free video-sharing website that makes it easy to manage online videos. You can even create and upload your videos to share with others. Initially formed in 2005, YouTube is now one of the most popular websites, with visitors watching approximately 6 billion hours of video every month.
In addition, an upcoming test for Premium subscribers will let users “seek to the exact moment in a video that you want to watch” (though YouTube is not delivering any more detail on how that works right now). These work alongside YouTube’s “chapters” feature, letting creators break videos into chunks.
YouTube has demonstrated itself as the home of long-form video on the web, so it’s interesting to see the company trying to maintain its cake and eat it. Yes, it’s got long-form video nailed, but now you can chop that video into small, bite-size packages or rub in on the most watchable clips! So what else is a platform to do with TikTok on the horizon?