We have been hearing a lot about the developments in the social media sphere, but one tends to forget that social media can’t be spoken about without talking about YouTube.
In fact, YouTube made it possible for all of us to record homemade videos that went viral. Thus, YouTube has a special place in the realm of social networking and social media. However, one must admit that YouTube’s interface though user-friendly, is a little tacky.
Moreover, the all too white background is always a distraction from the darker shades of a video that is being played. With that in mind, YouTube has unveiled the ‘Cosmic Panda‘ which gets rid of the old cluttered and white video portal to something that is stylish, seek and dark. In fact, it almost looks noir to me and is in sync with contemporary web designing trends. You could easily check out videos and thumbnails, controls are more accessible and intuitive, and Cosmic Panda allows you to customize your page or channel more than ever.
The videos are now set against a dark background instead of the white background and thus would lower the contrast levels between video content and YouTube page. You could also choose to play the videos in 3 different sizes instead of the previous two. Of course, you would be able to use full-screen version as well. The thumbnails are bigger and easier to locate, and your playlists would appear right below the video that is being played. Cosmic Panda also offers 4 templates that you could choose from. These include versions like Creator, Blogger, Network, and ‘Everything’.
Creator puts the video on top of a playlist and the Blogger template puts your recent activity or ‘vlogroll’ in a reverse chronological order. The ‘Network’ allows you to view videos above a group of channels, and the ‘Everything’ template puts the video that you are viewing on top of playlists and a group of channels would appear below the video. You could also change your avatar when you want. Cosmic Panda at the moment is available only on Google Chrome, but I do hope it would be made available on other browsers soon. Finally, YouTube begins to look a lot more stylish and chic!
you can also read about YouTube’s Investment in new content and how you could Remove YouTube Search Bar.
