To help you learn about the big stories of the week, we’re kicking off a new series from CitizenTube, a YouTube channel focusing on global news and politics.

Everyday on the CitizenTube channel (and @CitizenTube on Twitter), along with our curation partners @storyful, we look at how the top news stories are covered on YouTube. Each week, starting today, we'll post a weekly recap of the top news stories of the week, as seen through the lens of both citizen-reported footage and professional news coverage.

• We witnessed widespread protests in Cairo, Egypt after the tragic deaths of over 70 people at a soccer game in Port Said.
• We monitored reports of violence in Syria, where fighting intensified causing the Arab League to suspend its monitoring mission in the country.
• We observed parts of Queensland and New South Wales being declared natural disaster zones due to flooding after days of heavy rainfall.
• We watched Eastern and Southern Europe come to a standstill due to freezing temperatures and unprecedented levels of snowfall.
• We followed the GOP candidates do battle in Florida as tensions grew on the US campaign trail, with Mitt Romney emerging as the comprehensive victor in the Sunshine state.
• We watched social networking giant Facebook announce that it was going public, as it sought to raise $5bn in the largest IPO by a technology company.
• We viewed Occupy Oakland protesters burn the Star Spangled Banner after clashes with police.
• We saw Novak Djokovic defeat Rafael Nadal to claim the Australian Open final, in a match that will go down in history as one of the greatest of all time.
• And finally, we looked forward to Super Bowl XLVI, as some companies released advanced versions of their half-time commercials.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics Manager, recently watched “Inside Syria: Escalating violence pushes country toward full-blown war”.

Game day can’t come soon enough? Get in the spirit today with the official premiere of Madonna’s “Give Me All Your Luvin” featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on YouTube. You can find the video on the Madonna YouTube Channel, along with teasers for her halftime show performance.



We’ll also have her video up on the YouTube Ad Blitz Channel pre-game on Sunday, where you’ll be able to view and vote for your favorite commercials.

Love the song and can’t wait for the album? You can pre-order it now, and stay tuned to her Google+ profile for her latest news and behind-the-scenes photos leading up to the big game.

Craig McFadden, YouTube Partner Development, recently watched “‘W.E.’ - Official Trailer.”

As I wrote in the Huffington Post recently, we here at YouTube believe that great educators can come from all walks of life, and we want to see more teachers - in the broadest sense of the word - turn YouTube into their global classroom. The demand on YouTube for educational content - from math to science to history and beyond - continues to grow. We did some math of our own recently, and found that views of educational content DOUBLED in the last year. We also found that nearly 80% of the views for this content came from outside the U.S., suggesting that our vision for a global classroom might be becoming a reality.

So for all you knowledge-hungry people around the world, today we’re welcoming the first six new educational channels coming to YouTube as part of the new original content initiative we announced last year (more to come later this year). Without further ado, and In alphabetical order … (what else?) ….

Crash Course
A weekly dose of world history, from one half of the vlogbrothers, John Green. The first episode tackles the agricultural revolution, and over the year, the show will tackle the entire 15,000 years of human civilization. Insider tip: the show is written in conjunction with John’s high school history teacher!



Deep Sky Videos
Back in the 1700s, astronomer Charles Messier was hunting for comets … and kept getting frustrated by objects that were NOT comets … so he made a list of these non-comet objects, which went on to become one of the most famous lists of cosmic objects in science. This channel is a quest by Brady Haran to make videos about all 110 so-called Messier Objects … starting with M1 (side note: Brady’s collaborator on another YouTube channel called periodicvideos is Professor Martyn Poliakoff, who was today awarded the Ron Nyholm Award for his role in chemistry education - congratulations!)




Intelligent Channel
This new channel hosts luminaries from education, art, and culture as they discuss the most topical subjects of the day. The hosts of the shows are actor/comedian Richard Belzer (from Homicide and Law & Order, and Paul Holdengraber of ‘Live from the New York Public Library’ fame. “Richard Belzer’s Conversation” will feature interviews with actors, comedians, directors, musicians, and writers. “The Paul Holdengräber Show will engage award-winning writers and artists about their work and passions.

Numberphile
Numberphile is a channel for people who love numbers and want to find out the stories behind them, also from Brady Haran. Numberphile’s very first video appeared on an auspicious date (the last binary date of a generation) - 11.11.11 - and of course, the video was all about the number 11 - and barcodes. The channel has gone on to feature videos about 98, 15, 31 … teaching us about grafting numbers and hexadecimals and Mersenne Primes in the process.



SciShow
From the other vlogbrother, Hank, SciShow aims to teach scientific concepts in an easy-to-understand way, covering everything from particle physics to DNA. The first episode is about "non-newtonian fluids," and the second episode focuses on the Higgs Boson particle and includes interviews with the director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.



The Spangler Effect
YouTube was only five months old when Steve Spangler first taught people how to turn a bottle of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos into an exploding geyser. Science videos are among the most popular viral videos on YouTube, and this channel will set out to make science more approachable and a whole lot more fun.




We hope you enjoy these additions to our YouTube Education corpus, which today has 700+ partners and more than 500,000 videos. If you’re a teacher, check out youtube.com/teachers for a set of education resources that includes more than 300 playlists of videos that align with core education standards. And if you want to make YouTube more accessible in your school, check out YouTube for Schools.

Angela Lin, Head of YouTube Education, recently watched “The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1”.

The good ship Wilco sailed into YouTube Music this week, with the premiere of their new video “Dawned on Me”, which believe it or not, is the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in 30 years. We also featured a curation from Black Bananas, a video from Cymbals Eat Guitars, and more...

Busta Rhymes with YouTube and Google Music

Back in November, Busta Rhymes offered you all a chance to appear in the music video for "Why Stop Now," his latest single. Hundreds of you took up his challenge, downloaded the song, learned the verse, and filmed yourselves spitting it. Busta watched the entries, selected his favorites, and had director Hype Williams splice them into the final cut. We're happy to debut the results. Take a look, and see which fans did the verse nice enough to earn Busta's seal of approval.




Chemical Brothers

For the first time in 20 years, electronica pioneers the Chemical Brothers have captured their audio-visual live show on film. The movie, titled “Don’t Think”, is directed by Adam Smith, and will be hitting theater screens around the world later this year. To celebrate, Adam and the Chemical Brothers collected some of their favorite YouTube music videos in a playlist:

 

January Fresh Faces

Every month, we feature a handful of newly-signed music partners on YouTube’s homepage. Amongst January’s picks, Jitta55 shows us his "Drink Face," and Shonsta performs an intense guitar solo:

 

Tim Partridge, YouTube Music Manager, recently watched Busta Rhymes “Why Stop Now ft. Chris Brown”

Did you vow to get in shape in 2012? Maybe you committed take your business to the next level this year, too. Keeping either resolution can be a challenge, so we wanted to call out a few YouTube fitness Channels doing great work both with their videos and their advertising—without breaking a sweat.

Mike Chang has a growing following on YouTube thanks to his easy-to-do workout videos, steady stream of new content and special seasonal discounts offers on his Six Pack Shortcuts program. This January he gave YouTube subscribers 70 percent off from his new Insane Home Fat Loss program. He also uses YouTube TrueView video ads to reach new viewers, and now has more than 370,000 Channel subscribers interested in rock solid abs.



The Flex Belt and TRX Channels use their YouTube Channels to host tons of video content for beginners and experts alike, many featuring celebrities like Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry for Flex Belt or NFL superstar Drew Brees on the TRX Channel. Talk about motivation. Through the power of video, Flex Belt and TRX can capture an audience’s attention, show how their products work, and then tell viewers how to buy the product with banner ads on their brand Channels or call-to-action overlays over their videos. TRX’s YouTube Channel banner ended up being responsible for 7 percent of all holiday sales through paid search Channels in December 2011.





If you’re a business owner, musician, filmmaker, fitness expert or all of the above, you can build an audience with YouTube video advertising tools by getting started with Google AdWords for video today.

Baljeet Singh, group product manager, recently watched “S*&t Silicon Valley Says.”

You asked, and today President Obama will answer. This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 pm ET), President Obama will head to the Roosevelt Room of the White House to connect face-to-face with people across America over a live Google+ Hangout. This first-ever virtual interview will be streamed live on the White House YouTube Channel so you’ll have a front row seat.

In the past week, over 225,000 of you have asked a question or cast a vote on the White House YouTube channel, voicing your interest in everything from military benefits to online poker, outsourcing to the Occupy movement. During today’s post-State of the Union interview, a selection of the top-voted YouTube questions will be asked, and several participants will actually join the President in the live Google+ Hangout to pose their questions directly.

Tune in today to watch Your Interview with President Obama live at 2:30 p.m. PT on youtube.com/whitehouse and see how President Obama addresses the issues that you care about.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Ask Obama: Why Tuesday”

If you’ve been to the YouTube homepage today, you may have noticed CaliforniaTravelTips featured in the Spotlight. Veronica Hill, the woman behind CaliforniaTravelTips, is our featured “On The Rise” partner for January.

Born and raised in California, Veronica has 30+ years of travel experience that she’s translated into an informative YouTube series about all the Golden State has to offer. Ever wondered what the best strategy is for tackling Disneyland? Planning a trip to San Diego and want advice about must-do sites and activities? Think you want to visit Yosemite but want a preview of the best wilderness hiking trails? Answer any of these questions and more with Veronica’s detailed and digestible travel videos, with more than 150 video reviews to watch.



Here are a few words from Veronica:
California is one of the most diverse and wonderful places in the world! We have sandy beaches, snow-capped mountains, breathtaking national forests, and vast stretches of lonely desert. After 20 years as an editor and writer for magazines, books and newspapers, I decided to try something new. In 2007, Tim Carter of AsktheBuilder.com suggested that we start a YouTube channel. That weekend, my husband, Jason, and I went to the local camera store and bought a cheap digital video camera, tripod and Radio Shack mic. We began filming our favorite vacation spots and attractions throughout California... We want to thank the YouTube community and everyone who voted. You guys are awesome, and we couldn't have done it without your support! If you’ve enjoyed this monthly On The Rise blog series and want to see more rising YouTube partners, check out our On The Rise Channel. Keep an eye out for next month’s blog post, as your channel may be the next one On The Rise!

Christine Wang and Devon Storbeck, YouTube partner support, recently watched “driving on mountain top ORIGINAL!”

This is part of an ongoing series sharing tips from the YouTube Creator Playbook, a resource of best practices and tips you can start using on your Channel and videos right away.

There’s tons of data and information available about your Channel, videos and audience in YouTube Analytics, but the power of this information rests in how you use it. Here are tips for how to monitor the overall performance of your Channel and how to assess your videos based on the what the data is telling you.

Find the Story Behind the Data

• Learn what each metric means and how the different metrics correlate to one another to find the 'why' and 'how' of trends you're seeing. Don't just kick your feet up when you see a nice spike in views - dig deeper to learn more. Find what video is causing the increase or look at traffic sources to see where the new views are coming from.
• Hear FreddieW discuss how he uses tracking and measuring to assess the impact of all the strategies he tries on his Channel:

Peaks, Most, Biggest

• Use Analytics to investigate ‘peaks’ and ‘most’ of each metric. What videos are driving the most subscribers and why? What week did your Channel get the most views and what traffic source makes up the biggest portion of your views? Answers to these can help you plan your future videos based on where you’re seeing the most success.
• Gunnarolla uses Analytics to find out where his views come from for his Channel:

Videos Driving Subscribers

• Now you can not only track your daily subscriber gains and losses, but you can see what specific videos are driving your subscriptions. Find out which call-to-action are helping you get the most people to subscribe to your Channel.

Use Your Archive

• YouTube Analytics is a great way to keep an eye on how your archive is performing, beyond just new uploads. The 'Top 10' and video level metrics allow you to see which videos from your archive are still performing well or maybe even spiking in viewership. Use this information to prioritize what videos to optimize with annotations, new thumbnails or playlists.

To learn more about using YouTube Analytics to help your Channel succeed and many other tips, check out the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Echoes...”

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we've come across this week:

• We took in some dazzling videos of the Northern Lights captured on camera.
  
  
• We collected video from Egypt's one-year anniversary of its revolution.
  
  
• We examined how a certain very popular trend of 2012 has gone local.
  
  
• We checked in on the ever-growing popularity of dubstep.
  
  
• We were blown away by crazy footage of a California wind storm.
  
  
• And we met an 8-year-old girl who might just be one of the best elementary school metal guitarist that we've seen:

Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Ignition."

Today, we’re excited to welcome long-time YouTube Partner Annoying Orange to the blog to celebrate an impressive milestone - one billion views on his channel. Now, for a fresh perspective:

Hey! Hey Youtubers! HEEEEEEY! Thanks for letting me borrow your blog! I promise not to chop it! HAHAHAHA!

Wow. You know I've never actually written a blog before. Or read one. I usually just stick to emoticons. Oh! Oh! Here's one of me going NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH:

(:^)

And this is me smiling with waffle fries in my mouth:

(:#)

And this is pear with a mustache:

(:{)



No, he doesn't actually have a mustache. It's just peach fuzz! HAHA!

And that one:

(:O)

That one means, "Thanks to all our fans for tubing in… ONE BILLION TIMES!" I've been using that one a LOT lately!

Oh! Oh! One more! One more!

Do you know what this means:

!!!!

Hey! Hey! Do you give up yet!? You give up!? How 'bout now?! Now?! OH! OH! NOW!?

Okay, I'll tell you! It means "Holy smokes, the Annoying Orange is celebrating his BILLIONTH VIEW with an EPIC new video up now! You saw the action, now see the REVENGE! Wall-to-wall jokes, all your favorite guest stars, and lots and lots of FIRE!!! Don't miss it!"

See, with an emoticon like that, what else do you really have to say? You know, besides (:^)

See you then!

A to the O!

Annoying Orange, Guest to the YouTube Blog, recently watched, “Annoying Orange Comedy Roast!.”

The annual independent film extravaganza known as the Sundance Film Festival is underway in Park City, Utah. For film lovers who couldn’t make it this year to meet to-be-discovered filmmakers and rub shoulders with celebrities, we're bringing Sundance to you here on YouTube.

Last year, we showcased past and present short films in the YouTube Screening Room. This year, we’ve teamed up with Sundance Film Institute to premiere a collection of films that are available for the first time for digital stream.

Films include Obselidia (Independent Spirit Award Winner), Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007 Sundance Film Festival documentary on the arcade gamer competitions in the ‘80s), New York Times Critic’s Pick Lord Byron and 1994 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award Winner What Happened Was.

To mark the last weekend of the festival, we’ll premiere Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie tomorrow at the same time the shock humor duo showcase their world premiere at the 2012 festival. This star-studded comedy features Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and is already picking up buzz in Park City.

For the best of Sundance and thousands of other titles, get more into movies at YouTube.com/Movies.

Mildred Padilla, Movies Merchandising Manager, recently watched “Brick.”

This week we’re kicking off our recurring Release Notes post for 2012, highlighting some of the most recent updates to YouTube. Our scrappy engineers have been hard at work to make your experience  even better, and here’s what’s new.

New look for Browse
Today we're giving the Browse page a fresh look-and-feel, to help you find even more great Channels on YouTube. Alongside the top lists like Most Viewed Today, you can now discover and subscribe to more YouTube Channels on browse pages, which will then regularly update on your homepage. You can also discover more content under categories including Entertainment, People & Blogs, Science & Technology and more. You’ll find it all on YouTube.com/browse.


Video Editor with new features
We first announced the YouTube Video Editor back in June of 2010 and since then we’ve added dozens of features that we hope you’ve enjoyed. With the recent YouTube homepage update we felt it was time to give the Video Editor a visual overhaul, as well as adding a cool new timeline, easier clip trimming and a moving playhead. Head over to YouTube.com/editor to see the changes. Here’s a shot of what it looks like:


Video Manager with oldies and new goodies
We’ve listened to your feedback from the Video Manager update in December, and have a bunch of new features and improvements. Along with a visual update, the Video Manager includes search history, and an improved display of scheduled uploads and claimed videos. You also wanted us to add back in the likes and dislikes statistics as well as sorting videos by popularity, so those features have returned. This will be rolling out over the next few days, and here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:


David Wang, product specialist, recently watched “Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover),” Alan deLespinasse, software engineer, recently watched “Extreme Sheep LED Art [HQ],” and Jung Kim, User Experience Designer, recently watched “[M/V] ITAEWON FREEDOM (with J.Y. Park).”

This week on YouTube Music we’ve premiered Ryan Adam’s new video, enjoyed an exclusive playlist of Tiesto’s favorite tracks, and had, in the words of one YouTube commenter, our “brains tickled” by Matthew Dear’s In The Middle. Check back each day to discover more great music, including...

Nada Surf: live and playlisting!
Nada Surf are celebrating 20 years of work together, from the days of Popular, to the innovative covers, and even an early example of crowdsourcing music videos through a YouTube competition in 2008. They’ll be blowing the candles on their cake, and playing their new album live from the Bowery Ballroom this evening at 7pm PT. To get you in the mood, the guys have selected some of their favorite music videos, including tunes from The Wrens, Softback and Sea Wolf. Check out their playlist, then head over to the Nada Surf Channel to watch the show!



Sundance 2012
Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival has long been a major force in the world of independent cinema, and with the expansion of its music program has truly become the place to be in January. For our Sundance 2012 playlist, we combined videos from some of the artists performing live, with some of our favorite songs featured in the films on show. Strap on your snow boots and enjoy tracks from Public Enemy, Flying Lotus, The Charlatans and more.



Elizabeth Harper - Class Actress
Finally, earlier this month we featured Azari & iii’s video for “Reckless (With Your Love)”, which throws back to old school 90s house music. Tweaking sounds from the past has been a recurring theme with emerging talent and our pick for this week is Class Actress - “Bienvenue” - you’re sure to experience that 80’s feeling!



Tim Partridge, YouTube music manager, recently watched "Girls - 'Honey Bunny' Official Video."

L’Oreal Paris is kicking off a search across the U.S. to find the next beauty guru on YouTube. One aspiring expert will win a spotlight on the Destination Beauty YouTube Channel and have their beauty tutorial video shown among 10 of YouTube’s most popular tutorial stars. This lucky beauty aficionado will also enjoy a trip for two to New York City for some pampering at L’Oréal USA and a year’s supply of L’Oréal Paris cosmetic, hair care, hair color and skincare products to support their “how-to” video efforts.

If you think you have what it takes, sharpen your (eyeliner!) pencils and make sure your video is a cut above the rest. To get motivated, YouTube partner and beauty expert Kandee Johnson shares what you need to know about the contest.



How to enter and contest rules
To enter, submit a tutorial video here that shares your “how-to” tips and tricks behind your favorite red carpet-inspired hair and makeup look. You can submit as many videos as you’d like, so explore a variety of trends and styles. Video submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges measuring on the quality of instruction, production and end result, and full rules for the contest are here.

Good luck and can’t wait to see all of your glamorous videos!

Jamie Berkowitz, lifestyle program manager, recently watched "Make up look for the Office -Tuesday."

Super Bowl XLVI will be one of the biggest moments of the year for advertisers, commanding the attention of millions of Americans tuned in to watch the game. After the big plays on the field, you can join in on the action online with YouTube Ad Blitz — where you decide the best commercial of the game.

As the premier online gallery of Super Bowl commercials, YouTube Ad Blitz puts all the commercials in your hands, letting you view and vote on the top ads of the Super Bowl, whether you’re on a computer, mobile phone or tablet. This year, NBC Sports is the official partner for YouTube Ad Blitz, adding online promotion to its Super Bowl coverage.


Troy Ewanchyna, Vice President, Business Development & Digital Strategies, NBC Sports Group, noted, “YouTube’s Ad Blitz is the perfect platform for us to extend our online promotion for our coverage of Super Bowl XLVI. The post-game Ad Blitz and the next-day Google+ Hangout allow us to extend our coverage and continue to serve viewers even when the game has concluded.”

The Ad Blitz gallery will be hosted on NBCSports.com and the YouTube Ad Blitz Channel, where you can watch your favorite commercials after they’ve aired on NBC. Voting begins after the final whistle and will continue until Midnight ET on February 13. We’ll also host a Google+ Hangout after the game where you can chat face-to-face with an NBC celebrity. Stay tuned to our blog for details.

Let the ad game begin!

Suzie Reider, head of industry development, global video team, Google, recently watched “6 tips for an awesome football party - Super Bowl XLVI.”

Update: Corrected percentage increases.

Since the dawn of YouTube, we’ve been sharing the hours of video you upload every minute. In 2007 we started at six hours, then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48, and now...60 hours of video every minute, an increase of more than 25 percent in the last eight months. In other words, you’re uploading one hour of video to YouTube every second. Tick, tock, tick, tock — that’s 4 hours right there!

In the past we’ve made charts and infographics to describe the kind of mind-boggling engagement you’re driving, and this time we let our dataheads run wild. They came back to us with onehourpersecond.com — an interactive collection of what happens in a YouTube second. Here’s a sample:



For all the hours of video you’re uploading—you’re watching more as well; we’ve now exceeded four billion video views globally every day. That’s up 30 percent in the last eight months and the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching a video every day, the same number as there are US $1 bills in circulation, the same as number of years since there was water on Mars...it’s a big number, and you’re making it bigger every day.

With more original Channels rolling out this year, a new homepage to help you find and follow Channels you love, and new tools for creators always on the horizon, we’re excited to see how many times you’ll grow these numbers this year!

The YouTube Team recently watched “The Joy of Books.”

If you could hang out with President Obama, what would you ask him? Would your question be about jobs or unemployment? The threat of nuclear weapons? Immigration reform? Whatever your question is, submit it on YouTube for the opportunity to ask the President directly in a special interview over a Google+ Hangout from the White House.

On Monday, January 30, a few days after delivering his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions you’ve submitted in a live-streamed interview. Starting today through January 28, you can visit the White House YouTube channel to submit your video and text questions and vote on your favorites. Your YouTube questions will drive the interview, and several participants with top-voted questions will be selected to join the President in the Google+ Hangout to take part in the conversation live.



So take out your camera, check your hair and go to youtube.com/whitehouse to submit your question now. Need ideas? Visit youtube.com/whitehouse on Tuesday night to watch the President’s State of the Union address live. The address will be followed by the Republican response on Speaker Boehner’s YouTube channel.

Video questions are preferred (though we also accept text) and should be about 20 seconds long. In the video description, be sure to tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from.

Your Interview with President Obama will be streamed live at 5:30 p.m. ET on January 30 on youtube.com/whitehouse. You have until midnight ET on January 28 to submit your question and make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched, “How to Buy a Car, Using Game Theory”

We checked the calendar, and it looks like we’re just in time for the last acceptable moment for a 2011 re-cap post. From the zany to the educational, our engineering and product teams launched tons of features to make YouTube an even better place for both viewers and creators. Let’s look back at some of these:

We launched features to improve the viewing experience for the 800 million of you who visit YouTube each month, like:

• A New Homepage and Design: Launched in December to help you to get more into the great content you love, with a customizable YouTube Channels line-up and feed of the latest activity and videos from your subscriptions.
• YouTube Original Channels: Original Channels from well-known personalities from the TV, film, news, sports and other fields, to up-and-coming media companies, to some of YouTube’s existing partners. Full line-up here.
• YouTube Politics: As we’re now in an election year in the United States, this Channel is your one-stop-shop to follow the latest political stories, connect with the candidates and keep your finger on the political pulse of the nation.
• YouTube Rentals: From new releases to all-time classics, thousands of full-length films from major Hollywood studios are available to rent in the US, UK, Canada and Japan at youtube.com/movies.  
• YouTube Slam: Born on TestTube, this video discovery experiment was cooked up with folks from Google Research. Each week a new crop of videos battles head-to-head in Comedy, Cute, Music, Bizarre and Dance Slams, where your votes determine who wins the Slam and gets featured on the leaderboard.

Every minute, 48 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube, so we’re always working to help you make your videos the best they can be:

• YouTube Editor: The Editor team was busy in 2011, launching image stabilization for smoother videos, the Edit Video button for one-click video editing and enhancements, and including Creative Commons licenses building a library of millions of CC tagged videos.  
• YouTube Analytics: We love data, so we added even more features to help you examine and grow your audience through more detailed reporting.
• More opportunities to make money from videos: We're also helping more uploaders make money from their videos. You might have noticed a button saying "Make money on your videos" last time you logged in to your YouTube account, which you might see if your account is in good standing and you’ve been adhering to our Community Guidelines. If you opt in, ads might run on your videos and you could start earning revenue. We've made this feature available to many account holders in the U.S. already, and over the coming months we'll be making it available to more people around the world.
• YouTube.com/Create: No camera? No problem. With partners like Magisto, Vlix, GoAnimate and others, you can still create animated and personal videos to upload directly to YouTube.

With new features coming out every week, these examples are just a few of the launches in 2011. So, we also want to hear from you. What was your favorite YouTube product launch of 2011? Let us know by leaving a comment on the +YouTube page.

John Harding, Engineering Director, Recently Watched “Teahupoo from the Phantom HD Camera.”

Ever been among the thousands of screaming fans rocking out to Tiësto and wanted to see what life is like from the other side of the DJ booth? Check out “In the Booth,” a new series on YouTube that documents the world-traveling, beat-making life of Tiësto, aka Tijs Michiel Verwest. The first episode is available today:



If you add the Channel to your homepage guide you’ll regularly get exclusive commentary and personal insight into Tiësto’s life and work, venues around the world, festival life on and off-stage, and more clubbing than you could ever fit into just one night.

New episodes kickoff today on Tiësto’s YouTube Channel, with more coming every week. And remember you can get into even more great electronic and other music on YouTube Music, with new tunes every Tuesday.

Adam Relis, Content Partnerships manager, recently watched “Mission: Impossible - Theme (Tiësto Remix).”

If you want to get even more excitement from the NFL Playoffs, check out YouTube's new Ad Blitz Pre-Game program, sharing news coverage, party tips and videos from YouTube partners and sponsor Dodge Durango. The Pre-Game program is the warm-up for our annual Super Bowl Ad Blitz advertising extravaganza, which kicks off February 5.


On Ad Blitz Pre-Game we’ve got fan-friendly recipes from food partners like FoodWishes and AverageBetty. You’ll also find football news, opinions and predictions from partners like ProFootBallWeekly, and JRSportBrief, as well as early predictions for the big game. To get started, check out this PB&J-flavored chicken wings recipe for a lip-smacking twist on a tailgating favorite:



If you’re looking for a place to call home over the NFL Playoffs, stop by Ad Blitz Pre-Game and enjoy the YouTube Channels getting you ready for kickoff!

Mark Day, program manager, recently watched "The Topic: NFL Playoff Predictions, Week Two."