In a bid to get more advertising revenue, YouTube is having a makeover. The redesign is a bid to become a more attractive place for content owners to show their streams – case in point being Disney who just signed up to a deal with Youtube.

See an example of the new style Youtube

So why the redesign?

Youtube are apparently having big cash flow problems. The problem being that although they make an alleged $240 million in revenue per year. They are currently spending in the region of over $700 million per year. Most of that big hunk of cash (over $350 mill) goes on the phenomenal bandwidth useage.

They (Youtube) Have been trying many different ways to bring in the bacon for the biggest video site in the world including widescreen, HD and more improvements and this is the latest. Features of the new look site include:-

• They will remove the current tabs “videos,” “channels” and “community” and replace them with four tabs: Movies, Music, Shows, and Videos.
• The first three tabs are there for ‘premium content’, but YouTube doesn’t have many licensing agreements yet.
• Videos in all four sections will feature instream, interruptive advertising, like Hulu do right now.
• There will be a new player interface. It looks like the Hulu player, marking on the timeline where ads will play and allowing viewers to ‘dim the lights’.
• The redesign will emphasize a divide between premium content and user uploaded videos.
• The launch is due to happen on April 16th.

The New style Youtube was reported in a Youtube blog post:-

In a constant effort to improve the user experience and incorporate your feedback we’ll be making a number of large changes to the site over the next few months. In addition to making improvements upon existing features, we’ll be rolling out some brand new items that are still in the works. We can tell you there is a lot to look forward to, but in the meantime we offer you this sneak preview of the new YouTube video browsing page (our “Videos” tab) and invite you to share your feedback with us.

Categories will now be found under the “Videos” tab.

Dropdown menus make for a smoother transition when clicking through popular pages, ie. “Most Viewed,” “Top Favorites,” “Recently Featured,” etc.

Tabs and video browsing pages have a new overall look and feel.

Will this be the last of Youtube’s makeovers? Dont bet on it.

Related posts:

1. Youtube Gets The Google Makeover
2. Youtube Launch a Movie Trailers Section
3. Youtube spat with music industry in the UK
4. Watch out Youtube, your top Video Site but Hulu’s coming to get you
5. Youtube release app for big screen video watching