The Vergecast - YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan on new features for creators in 2022

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel and streaming reporter Catie Keck talk with YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan about new features coming to YouTube: more tools for Shorts, interactive live streaming, a new YouTube TV interface, and more. Further reading: YouTube is adding new ways for creators to make money with Shorts and shopping YouTube TV to finally add picture-in-picture on iOS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Special episode of the Vergecast today. YouTube head of product, Neil Moen, joins me and Verge streaming reporter Katie Keck. We talk about a bunch of new features coming to YouTube and YouTube TV. That's coming up on the Vergecast now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog.

That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom.

And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for sure. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of YouTube shorts monetization. I'm your friend, Neal. Katie Keck is here.

Katie's our streaming reporter. Hey, Katie. Hello, thank you for having me. It's great to have you on the show for the first time. And we have a very special guest, Neil Mowan, the chief product officer. of YouTube is here. Hey, Neil. Hey, Neal. It's great to be with you again. It's great to talk to you. So the last time I talked to you, it was on Decoder. We had like a business, strategy, leadership conversation, but you've got some YouTube product news to talk about today, features,

new buttons. I've got a laundry list of feature requests. We got to get into it. Just today, you've put out a blog post talking about sort of new features for YouTube. Give us the top line. Yeah, happy to do that. And of course, I'm mainly here for your feature requests. We should definitely get into that. But just start. Starting off, as you and I have talked about before, everything that we do at YouTube is really to just make sure that our platform remains the best place for creators and viewers. As you know, everything at YouTube starts with our creators. That's why we all as viewers come to the platform every single day. And so we want to make sure that, you know, we can fulfill the most ambitious creative goals that our creators have, be able to build a business on YouTube.

That's what I'm going to talk about, as well as everything that we're doing for viewers. And our viewer mission is that as long as our viewers are on a device with an internet connection, regardless of where they are in the world, they should get the best possible experience and seamlessly be able to connect with the creators that they're there for in the first place. So that's our mission statement of our product team. And along those lines, we have a number of things in store for 2022 that I'm extremely excited about that I'm happy to jump into. Yeah. One thing I just want from the start, YouTube is not just one product anymore. There's the YouTube app that we know and love. Inside of that, there are multiple kinds of products for creators to make. There's shorts, obviously. There's live.

Then there's YouTube music. Then there's YouTube TV. A lot of the news here is kind of about all of them at once. Just really quickly, how should people think about all those products interconnecting? How do you think about it? Yeah. I mean, I really think about it back to the way that I just described the mission. From a viewer standpoint, you know, the 2 billion plus viewers that come to the platform,

on a regular basis, they're looking to connect with their favorite creators, their favorite content, and everything that we talk about from a product and technology standpoint, in some sense, should almost sort of just almost fade away and really just be in support of that goal. And so whether that's on the mobile apps, whether it's on Android or iOS, whether it's on a television screen, as you know, our fastest growing screen is actually a television screen, whether that's through new applications like YouTube TV or the music app, that's sort of a means to an end from my standpoint. And the ultimate goal of everything that we build is about that connectivity between viewers and creators. So that's how I think about it.

That's how I set the goals and the mission of our product team here at YouTube. And I think it allows us to really focus on that mission and sort of let all of the product innovation sort of be the means by which we accomplish that mission. All right. So just keeping that mission in mind, Katie and I were reading the blog post and both of us lasered in on this line about the metaverse. And it just says we're thinking about how the metaverse can make gaming even more interactive and immersive. And I think a couple months ago, Susan said you were going to do NFTs and some blockchain

stuff for creators. That's all pretty hazy. When you say we're going to use the metaverse to make gaming more interactive and immersive in the context of those YouTube products, what do you mean? Yeah. Yeah, so as you know, Neela, that term is obviously used all over the place. It's a loaded term. And so in the context of YouTube, again, it really just means how we can just strengthen that connection between our viewers and our creators.

And so gaming is an area that I point out in the post in terms of our vision for 2022, because I think it's a place where a lot of that interactivity already sort of blatantly exists on our platform. Obviously, YouTube is a, you know, we pride ourselves on being home for gamers. There's lots of live streams happening on a regular basis. There's lots of VOD content that's consumed in that gaming vertical on a regular basis. And a lot of what happens there is really kind of manifested through kind of the strength of that gamer community. Whether you're a consumer of that content, whether you're a creator yourself, that's already happening latently on our platform, whether it's through comments, whether it's through YouTube posts, stories, shorts, etc., all of that sort of community aspect is happening.

And so when you think about something like the term metaverse, the way that I'm thinking about it is along those lines of interactivity. So let me give you a couple of concrete examples of where this could go on a platform like YouTube that would feel sort of very native to YouTube and it's something that I think our users and creators would really enjoy. So, you know, you're watching a stream, a live stream of your favorite creator. you're interacting with that creator either through the live chat or through one of our, you know, even our monetization products, whether it's super chat or what have you. And you're

part of that community as the stream is going on. Well, you know, you're there because you love that creator. You also love that game. Are there interesting ways that you could collaborate more closely with that creator? What if there was a way that you could actually move from consuming to gameplay mode in a more sort of seamless fashion? So that's sort of one conceptual idea. And I don't have any more specifics to get into in terms of the mechanics of how that would work in our player or anything like that today. But I wanted to give you sort of a concrete picture of how something like that could work. Wait, hold on. That idea has been around for a minute, though. I very distinctly recall watching the Stadia introduction, and that was part of Stadia, right?

You're watching YouTube and you'll push it and you'll switch to streaming that game right away. Are you thinking about it in those terms? Because it obviously didn't work quite it out for Stadia. I'm thinking about it in those terms as it relates to YouTube. So, you know, YouTube is a place where you're already, I mean, you're engaging with that creator. You're, you happen to be doing it through a lot of these existing YouTube products, like I said, Super Chat or live stream or live chat or what have you. But, you know, the urge is there both as you as a gamer as a viewer, but also from the creator standpoint to actually get into the gameplay. So, yes, it's something that we've talked about in the past. But I do think that, you know, at least from our product team's perspective, we're very serious about.

finding ways to make that a concrete use case within YouTube. So I'm talking about it in the context of the YouTube app, whether you're watching it on a living room screen or whether you're watching it on your mobile. That's one example. Another example, which also I think, you know, has existed conceptually, but, you know, this is about taking conceptual ideas and turning them into reality for our creators and our viewers is co-watch experiences in the quote-unquote sort of metaverse type environment. That's been an idea that's been talked about. It's something that you can imagine lends itself incredibly well to the type of content that is streamed on YouTube, particularly in the gaming vertical, but you could see it outside of the gaming vertical as well. You could see it

obviously in music. That's an obvious sort of use case, co-watching of concert experiences within a metaverse type environment. And that's an area that we want to partner with all the game developers that we partner with already, creators, etc., to create those types of experiences. And so those are two concrete examples of use cases that, as you point out, have been talked about for a while. But I do think that we can make a reality on our platform. Do you think you're going to have to build out YouTube avatars? Like, will they have legs? Because, you know, Medez doesn't have legs. That's a big win for you if you could just do legs.

Or are you thinking about using other avatars from other game engines? I haven't gotten to the leg part of the PRD yet, but conceptually that is you could see those types of manifestations in the metaverse. You could see those types of controls being given to viewers. You could see those types of controls certainly being given to creators. Our creators are already doing versions of that themselves. I mean, you can see lots of streams and VODs on our platform where that concept has existed for a long time. You know, we have a term. We actually call them V-tubers. And so you could certainly see that as being part of what I just talked about. So, Neil, if I may, what I'm understanding is that the way that you understand YouTube's relationship to the Metaverse at present is less about gaming and more about gamification with feature and error activity. Is that correct?

So, yes, I think what you said is correct in terms of how the use cases would show up for our users and viewers on the platform. But the reason why I focused on gaming in my letter and why I'm using that as an example here is, first of all, I think that type of content lends itself to these types of more immersive type experiences, because by definition, when you're playing that game, you are immersed in that environment. And so that's one piece that I think is important. But I think the other piece that's really important as it relates to the gaming vertical is something that I set up top, which is that sort of connection between creators and viewers. and the community itself. And one of the things that I have learned, you know, during my time at YouTube is that the community, I think, is strong across all of YouTube, but it's particularly strong and interactive in the gaming route. A lot of the products that we've developed, especially as it relates to kind of community features and building on sort of that connectivity,

have started in the gaming verticals. So Super Chat, for example, has been a product that's been around for some time. It's a way for live creators on YouTube to generate revenue. by their fans basically kind of paying for placement, prominent placement in the live chat and also supporting their favorite creators at the same time. That started in gaming because that tradition of supporting your creator, supporting the community already existed in gaming. We have another one, which I talked about in the letter, which is the ability to gift channel memberships.

That is a feature that has been driven by gaming. And the reason it's been driven by gaming is because that sort of extreme extremely strong sort of community aspect really is kind of a part of the gaming tradition. So that's why I like that gaming examples in the context of something like the Metaverse as well. So there's the Metaverse, which I would say is like lightly controversial in the sense of, is it going to happen? Is like a good question, right? There's a long way to go before we spend our days and headsets in the full Metaverse. Next to that, and I think intertwined with it, maybe unfairly is blockchain, NFT, crypto stuff.

There has been some small announcements, again, from Susan, hey, we're going to think about doing this for creators. When you think about NFTs and creators, there's a lot of activity there. That's way more loaded. That's way more controversial. It is, I would say, an ideological war in the tech community, whether NFTs and the blockchain and crypto are going to pan out or whether they're good. You're very focused on creators. Is that something you're going to head into? Yeah.

So the first thing that I'll say up top is that, you know, I'm by no means an expert. on that technology. I don't think, I mean, there's obviously lots of people who've spent a lot of time thinking about it. As you described, there's an active conversation in our industry around all of these things. Active conversation's good. But, I mean, you kind of hit on the point, the first point I was going to make, which is for us, it all starts, and Susan pointed this out, you know, in her letter as well. It all starts with our creators, just like I said, again, at the beginning as it relates to our mission. And so there is a connection between the evolution of of that technology, particularly in the manifestation like NFTs and creators. You've seen that already

happen outside of YouTube, whether it's musicians looking for ways to crowdsource their next piece of creative content, whether it's a song or what have you, and allow fans to be able to partake in there, be able to bundle in things like, you know, things in the real physical world around meet and greets and things like that. And so that's already happening. And just like we've built other products. Like, you know, we built our merchandising shelf on YouTube because creators were selling lots of merch on YouTube and we wanted to make it easier for them. So we are very attuned to what our creators are thinking about and doing. And so that is sort of one lens at which we come at this. The second is, are there capabilities that, you know, this new technology, kind of these,

some of these new paradigms might afford that we couldn't do otherwise? So is there something, for example to this notion of, to this idea of potentially crowdsourcing the development of content. I mean, that is what happens on YouTube. Today, the model on YouTube is you build a video, you build an audience, and then you monetize it. Are there ways that we could continue to foster that creative process by having some of that risk taken away up front? But as a result of that risk being taken away up front, your fans and viewers can partake in the upside of it as an example. or you could potentially continue to participate in the upside of it as a creator, even if that piece of content continues to kind of get sold repeatedly in the future. And so those are

concepts that don't exist today that I think could be enabled by some of this new technology. And that's sort of what I was referring to in my letter. I think that's sort of what Susan was referring to. I don't have a concrete feature or a product proposal to talk about today, but that is the lens through which we're thinking about how something like, you know, blockchains and particularly NFT manifestations of it could show up on YouTube. Is that something you're working on or is it something you're thinking about? It's going to be something that we work on this year. So if I understand that correctly, I just want to make sure that I have this straight. So you're talking about owning specific videos.

This wouldn't just be like a still of one of my favorite creators doing something. Right? Well, I mean, I think that it could be any number of things. So you could imagine it being, as, you know, as you described the canonical use case, right? The pre-funding or crowdfunding of a video. Like that is, you know, kind of like a very clear case. But you could see a lot of other cases. I mean, you could see derivatives of that video. You know, today what's happening on the platform is people create, you know, clips of videos. They create even shorts of video related content. You could boil that down to. You know, you know, today, what's happening on the platform is people create, you know, you know, to thumbnails, iconic thumbnails, et cetera. And so there's lots of permutations and combinations. And I think, you know, one of the ways that, you know, at least my team is thinking about it is what are the ways that creators want to participate in that? But just as importantly, what are the ways that really add value from a viewer standpoint? You know, if you partake in that, you've acquired an NFT, you know, in your example of an image or of a clip of a video or a full video. You know, how do you display that? Where could that go? Like, what are, what are the

ways that users could actually continue to sort of not just derive satisfaction for it personally, but also display it and things like that. And so those are the active conversations that we have right now in terms of how we're thinking about this working, both for our creators and our and our viewers. All right, you mentioned shorts. That's a great segue to go out of future stuff to stuff that is happening right now. You've got some new features you're rolling out for shorts. That's the the vertical scrolling short form video product. How is shorts going? What are you adding to it? Yeah. So I'd say a couple things. So shorts, I think, is going really well. Since the last time we talked, it's rolled out all over the world. It's gotten on the order of five trillion views,

about 15 billion views on a daily basis. So it is being consumed by our viewers at a growing pace. creators are using it of all stripes. So, you know, again, back to this creator, viewer, connectivity. It's happening all over the world. So from an overall standpoint, in terms of user growth, creator growth, we're really pleased with it. Having said that, I would still say it's really, really early days. I mean, it is a product that, you know, I'm certainly pleased with in terms of the reception it's received, but it is still a product that, you know, we're going to continue to innovate on as one of our top priorities in 2022. That's why, you know, I started my letter really talking about that. And so, you know, we have a list of things that we want to do for

creators, for viewers. We want to continue to make this product a unique product to YouTube that feels YouTubey in terms of how you experience it. So all of that is in store. And then, you know, one of the big questions, you know, which we started on last year, but that we will continue to sort of build on this year is allowing creators to be able to build a business on the shorts product. So, you know, we pride ourselves in being, you know, kind of, you know, one of the original and largest creator economies out there. We've paid out over $30 billion to creators over, you know, kind of the life of YouTube. And we want that to continue to grow. And short should be a means to do that, too. So we had the shorts fund. One of the things I can share about that is we wanted

that to be something that we were doing sort of in addition to our existing YouTube partner program, which is our main monetization program on YouTube. And you know, you need to hit a certain threshold in order to qualify for that program. But we wanted shorts to be a place where new creators could actually start out and start generating revenues. So one of the cool things is 40% of the creators that were able to monetize through the shorts fund were not part of YPP. And that was obviously kind of a, the fund was a stake in the ground. But we want to turn. that into a robust permanent monetization program. So that's something that's on our radar screen. But then we want to also build on top of that other ways for creators to monetize by bringing

some of our existing monetization products like Brand Connect, which is a way for brands and creators to connect, Super Chat, those types of products to shorts as well. So that's an area of innovation. We want to, as I said, I can go on and on. I'll pause there. But I'm happy to talk more about some of the features that we're building out as well. Yeah, did you see the, there's a really great Hank Green video that just recently hit about why YouTube has a great moat for creators and TikTok is bad for Monumentization. Do you see that video? I did. And Hank is, you know, he's always, you know, a thought leader, as you know, in our community. I don't know if you chatted with him after that or not, but he's always got, you know, great insights and perspective on all of this. So one of the things

that he pointed out, the simplest piece of this puzzle is that right now, what's called them a standard YouTuber. You make a YouTube video, you put it up on YouTube, everyone knows what talking about. That is monetized through pre and mid-bidual advertising. And so you can assign the revenue to that creator. You got this many views, this many ads ran, it was at this rate, here's your cut of it, great. You have a business. And that business makes sense. When I talk to other YouTubers, they understand how that part of that business works. With shorts, with TikToks, with Instagram reels, there's not that connection between the advertising. the content, right? You're just scrolling through and you see an ad in the middle. And so that

unbundling of the monetization from the content creates all kinds of problems. And so you end up with things like creator funds that just sort of like pay you out on views without this ability to control the revenue. Is that a problem you can solve? You obviously have YouTube partner program and AdSense and all these programs that work for what we think of as normal YouTube, but you can't really apply them to product like shorts. Yeah, I mean, you're describing, you know, And I think Hank was insightful in this regard. A core, you know, kind of like the core use case of a shorts type experience. It's almost like a feed type experience as opposed to, you know, you're streaming this video and you're consuming this video and then you'll decide to move on to the next.

So like that core sort of critical user journey, if you will, is different. It's fundamentally different. And so that's the reason why we actually rolled out the shorts fund last year, which is basically a nod. to the fact that we believe, just like has been kind of part of the existing YouTube heritage, that creators being able to generate income and make money has got to be a core part of a product like shorts that we're rolling out that is going to be so central to the YouTube experience. But we have to work out the details. And so a fund was basically kind of a placeholder, if you will, before we work out, as I mentioned,

a more permanent monetization program. And I think that, you know, the monetization program that we develop has to take into account that sort of user modality that you describe. Like, how are you going to be, I think it has to have two core components. One is, how are you going to be transparent about how that is calculated so creators can understand it? As Hank alluded to, right, with our existing model, you can understand it pretty clearly. But secondly, it also obviously has to be fair. It has to be equivalent to the value that's being sort of contributing. to that user session, if you will, whether it's on a session basis or what have you.

And so those are the pieces that we're working out. As with everything that we do in this realm, we're going to actually get feedback from our creators as we go through this, you know, kind of creators that have been on the platform for a while, new creators, et cetera. And the shorts fund, and kind of the life of the short fund, I believe actually gives us the space to be sort of pretty thoughtful about how we roll something out here. Do you have a sense of, at the end of the day, right, the real competition is for minutes people spend to paying attention to things. So do you have a sense that you're taking market share from TikTok or Instagram Reels? How are you measuring that? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I gave you

some some just high-level metrics in terms of kind of how that product is doing overall, right? Like, you know, the $5 trillion views or what have you. But I would say that it is really early in the evolution of this format. And again, the way that I think about it is, yes, we should make sure that this product is successful more critically from like, is it actually something that fosters, you know, new creativity for creators on mobile devices, viewers love it, et cetera. But I view this sort of holistically across all of YouTube. You know, I think that for lots of viewers on the platform, it's going to be about consuming shorts content, but it's also going to be about consuming content that you've been coming to YouTube for for years.

And I think that the same thing might apply for lots of creators as well. There will, of course, be creators that are exclusively doing shorts or, you know, what you referred to as sort of more traditional YouTube videos, but I also see lots of videos, lots of creators moving from one to the other, experimenting.

And so a lot of my focus and my team's focus, and you saw some of this in the letter, are about sort of, almost sort of blurring those boundaries. So, you know, one of the features that I'm really excited about, just to give you a very concrete example, was the ability for people to remix audio that exists, obviously music, but other type of audio

from traditional YouTube videos into shorts. So that is a feature that you could imagine us continuing to build on with new video effects, editing tools, things like that. Another example of that that I'm pretty excited about is for creators to be able to have the capability to respond to comments with a short. And that comment could be on a VOD video.

It could be on a shorts video, could be anywhere on the platform, but that would be sort of a very kind of creative and interactive way for creators to engage with comments. And so we're thinking about those types of, we obviously, you've seen, you know, have the ability for you to be able to create shorts from a video as well. Or if you're listening to music in a short, being able to tap on a link and be able to link to the full music video, the original video, be able to find out more about the artist. So I think one thing that you can expect in 2022 from YouTube around shorts is really much more of sort of that blended, holistic experience, both from a viewer standpoint, as well as from a creator standpoint. And that's that's sort of how I think about that product. I'm going to ask one more question about monetization. I told you it was a flagship podcast of shorts monetization. And then I'm going to let Katie ask some creator questions.

The shorts creator fund, it was announced as $100 million to be paid out over 2021 and 2022. we're obviously into 2022. How much have you paid out so far? I don't have that exact number, but we announced that as sort of our intention through the course of this year, and then we'll obviously, you know, kind of judge how that's going,

figure out sort of if we need to make any sort of adjustments to it, but I don't have a concrete number in terms of what percentage has been paid out. Let's talk about some creator tools. Katie, I know you got some questions here. Yeah, absolutely. So all of these kind of are intertwined in some way or another. It's holistic.

Yes. You have YouTube holistically. Yes. But I wanted to start with YouTube studio and some insights that you're introducing that you say are going to help creators generate content ideas. I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, I think about what we're doing in studio and actually in some of the other product areas, too, I'll touch on kind of live there as well, is creators, obviously our products and our tools have to work in a seamless way. again, so that the technology is not getting in the way of, you know, the creativity of our creators.

That is sort of where the magic of YouTube happens. And a lot of what we're doing in studios along those lines, right? You know, making it even more effective and efficient on desktop, building out those capabilities in the mobile studio app. That's work that we're going to continue to do. But another thing that's really started to come up, I would say, you know, over the last few years, is what are the things that my audience is interested in? What are ways for me to think about my content, not just in terms of delivering from my existing

audience, but to grow my audience? And so that is an area where I believe we can provide lots of insights to creators around the type of content that they might want to think about that is potentially adjacent to content that they are already producing. So, you know, viewers that consume this type of video also were interested in this type of content as an example. Or when you produce videos along these lines, it benchmarks to the rest of your video content in this particular way. So I think these are really interesting insights. It's something that when I talk to creators, they ask for in various ways all the time. And I think that that is going to give them the insights to kind of spur new types of content creation, which, you know, producing content, producing

these videos is hard to make it so that it's interesting and engaging on a regular basis. You all know that. And so whatever we can do to make that easier for our creators is how we're how we're thinking about it. That's in terms of your specific question, Katie, around like, what are we doing in studio? But there's other products that we're also working on for creators to make it so that sort of that creative idea generation part becomes easier as well. Yeah. So on that note, let's talk about live streaming and co-streams for creators. That's interesting. Yeah. So that actually is a perfect example of what we were talking about. So this, again, this is another feature, another product that's been requested by a lot of our live streamers and actually creators in general. But it gets at sort of

what I was touching on, which is when you go live, what are you going to talk about? What are the ideas? And obviously, you might have a blueprint. You might have some thoughts. But being able to do that in a collaborative way with another creator or somebody else that you want to pull in as a guest into your live stream, I really think gets those creative juices flowing. So not only is it a new type of live stream, but it's actually something that helps sort of bootstrap that creativity process. At least that's what I hear from creators on a regular basis. So that's one of the products that I'm really excited about that I touch on in our letter, which is, you know, collaborative live streaming. And I think the fans of all those creators are going to love that as well.

And what I think remains to be seen is the very, like what I always love about building these products for our creators is that we have some idea based on conversations with them and how we've designed the product in terms of how it's going to be used. And then six months down the road, it's used in sort of incredible unexpected ways that I think sort of just kind of continue to grow our ecosystem. And I expect the same thing with something like collaborative live streaming. Can I follow up on that a little bit? Because one of the things that I think YouTube gets criticized for a lot, fairly or unfairly, is, yeah, a lot of these features kind of look like other platforms, right? It's hard to talk about shorts without talking about TikTok. It's hard to talk about going live with another person without knowing that, like, hip-hop artists can't stop doing that on Instagram. It's hard to talk about gifting memberships without knowing that that already happens on Twitch.

Is your expectation that you're going to bring over these core kind of features that other platforms have, and they're going to evolve into something else that's YouTube, or are you just trying to bring those features over because they are becoming table stakes across platforms? So first of all, as you know, this entire space is incredibly vibrant. There's competitors. There's platforms out there. There's new features, products coming from all of them on a regular basis.

And I think that sort of keeps all of us, frankly, on our toes and focused on doing what's right for our viewers and our creators. Having said that, everything that I've talked about so far, today and that that's in the letter that we're going through is really about how do we build a feature that is about something that our creators are looking for, that their behavior is either showing us or that they're telling me directly and that our viewers are showing or asking for. And so, you know, do collaboration products exist across the industry? Yeah, they do. They exist

in various forms, but the way that we're building it is a YouTube collaboration product for live streaming. And so, you know, is that like a product that existed that we're moving over? The way I think about it, it's a capability to expand live streaming on YouTube. I think it's a very natural ask for our creators to say, I live stream on the platform. Live streaming is fun, but it has these challenges. What are ways that I could make it, A, more fun, but also address some of these challenges, including the fundamental one of like, what do I talk about? And so that's the way that we design it. And so the conversation is always about how do we take the existing YouTube product and enhance it with these capabilities.

And that's where this idea of the collaboration product came from. And it's obviously something that we've been thinking about for a while. It takes a while to sort of get it right and build it and launch it. It's not something that we just sort of reacted to in terms of what was happening in the industry. Do you ever take a step back when you're building a live stream product, let's see people talk to each other and be like, shit, we made Zoom? Because it's a video, you made a video conference? Like, is there kind of a right?

recognition that these are just tools that are being kind of like remixed in the different purposes? Yeah. I mean, and so that's why I think it's important to always fall back to the core use cases. When you go to the YouTube app and you're watching a live stream, what are you doing as a viewer? Like, that's the principles through which we build the product. Similarly, if you're a creator. And so, yeah, obviously, you know, as you described in your insightful comment, there's lots of overlaps in terms of like some of the user journeys, et cetera. But from my perspective, in order to make it feel like a core, seamless part of YouTube. It sort of has to fit that journey.

And so you could imagine with the product that I'm describing, you know, you go to your, you know, let's use the gaming example again. You go and watch, you know, a gaming live stream with your favorite creator. Well, now that can be a collaborative live stream. And so to me, it just looks like an even better, more interesting way to augment what, you know, your favorite gamer was doing in that live stream in the first place. And oh, by the way, it might be your channel. It might be you as a creator that actually gets pulled into that collaborative live stream.

And so, you know, for me, it's sort of building on a lot of what already exists on YouTube. In this example, it's like live, but it's also the community aspects. And that's how we think about our features and products. With that question, I've gone better if I said Google Meet, are you allowed to acknowledge that Zoom exists? I mean, I'm using a new technology here to talk to you. So I use all kinds of technologies. Raising Riverside. I'll give them the plug. I mean, that's like a part of the puzzle here, right? Especially with lots of people remote and still remote is you're trying to get people to collaborate.

Yep, you can just talk to each other. It's one way to do it. There's all their ways to do it. And they may maybe the metaverse is one way that's coming in the future. But have you thought about like, I'll just go back to TikTok. TikTok has duet and stitch for their videos. So I don't think shorts has products like that yet. Are you going to build those out? Yeah. So as I said, I think shorts is really early. in its journey in terms of all the things that we could build. You know, I gave you an example of that remix product. Well, there's other ways that that remix product could work with existing content on the corpus. So that'll be one dimension that we expand in. Effects and the ability to actually create different types of content, whether it's, you know, collaborative as you're describing, sort of, you know, multiple shorts creators being able to kind of participate and produce a short. That's certainly something that we're looking at, being able to pull. I mean, in some sense,

the remix concept that I'm describing could apply to something like Stitch that you're describing, right? So those are going to be new products and features that you should look for in the shorts product this year. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I've really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce.

They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering, what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifes.

into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com slash vergecast. Support for the show comes from Grammarly. You don't need reminding that the world moves fast. But work today requires clear communication. And when every message counts sounding rushed or generic,

can be getting lost in the shuffle. Gramerly gives you one place to think, write, and finish your work where you already write, while giving you access to agents that help you sound natural and engaging. No matter what kind of writing you're doing, Gramerly helps you get ideas done faster and move from draft to done with less friction.

You can use Gramerley's AI chat to brainstorm ideas, outline a solid draft, then refine it with context-aware suggestions that fit what you're working on. See why 90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work. In a world of generic AI, you don't have to sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com.

That's Grammarly.com. So we've talked a lot about creators. I would say, in fact, most of this conversation on new features on YouTube have been really creator-focused, like new ways to make content, new ways to get recommendations on what content to make, which is fascinating new monetization. There's a line here. It's like buried in your letter. Soon, and this is about consuming YouTube.

Soon you'll be able to use your phone to engage with the content that you watch on TV. So this sounds like a full on YouTube second screen experience. You're watching your favorite YouTubers on your smart TV and you've got your phone open and then what is happening on your phone. Yeah. And as a, you know, daily consumer of YouTube content, on my television screen, it's something that I'm looking forward to a lot. And so the first thing I'll say, just by way of context, is TV continues to be our fastest growing screen really globally.

That's certainly, I'm sure, not a surprise to you, to all the listeners in terms of their own experience. But the growth of it has been pretty remarkable. It's at the order now of around 700 million hours of YouTube content consumed on those types of devices every single day. And again, continues through that number is as of last month, as of January. And so one of the one of the things that we all, I think, would wish to have when we're consuming YouTube on those large devices are a lot of the, is a lot of the functionality that we take for granted that we use with video watching on your mobile devices. And so the idea is to

have, as you describe, kind of a, to build out a full-fledged second-screen type experience powered by your mobile phone as you watch YouTube on a television screen. So to make that concrete, what could that mean? It could mean that you can use your mobile phone to comment on that video that you're watching. You could add that video, for example, to a playlist. You could read comments. You could share that video with a friend.

And so everything that you enjoy about the YouTube experience on your mobile phone, we want to be able to seamlessly provide that when you're consuming it on a little living room device. So that's something that I'm very excited about. Was this boom that you saw in usage on TVs directly tied to the pandemic and people spending more time in their homes? Or was this sort of a natural evolution that happened separate from the pandemic? Yeah, I would say that this growth in consumption on living room screens was something that we were seeing well before the pandemic. So we were seeing this certainly in some of our more mature market. but really kind of around the world.

And as with everything, the pandemic has accelerated lots of trends that were already underway. So, you know, I gave you some kind of hot off the press numbers as it relates to living room consumption of YouTube content. We saw the same thing in live, for example. Live content consumption through the pandemic tripled over the course of, you know, the two years that we've been living through the pandemic. And so, you know, shopping is another thing I touch on in my letter that I think accelerated, obviously, online commerce through the pandemic. So, but in the living room case, it was something that was happening before. But I'm sure, just like a lot of these trends, it got accelerated as a result of the pandemic. Do you think this sort of smartphone app, you're kind of describing all the stuff on the sides and the bottom of a YouTube page, right?

There's a chat, there's comments. Maybe you're going to shop. Is that how to think about it? Right. Like, you've got the video on your smart TV. you don't want to do laptop stuff on your smart TV, so we're going to move all that stuff from the web page onto a phone and let you interact in that way?

I mean, it's basically, yeah, it's sort of dealing with the limitations that you have in terms of interacting with YouTube on that TV and just eliminating them. And the most seamless way to do that is by making sure that there's kind of this mirrored experience between what you're consuming on the living room TV and your mobile phone,

because that's predominantly where that's the device that you have in your hand when you're watching TV anyways. And it's the place where all of this functionality and interactivity that you sort of take for granted on that watch page on the mobile phone exists. And so that's the experience that we want to bring to the living room device as well. A lot of times with YouTube features like this, there's varying compatibility requirements. But I'm guessing this one, you just have to be signed into your YouTube account, right? Yeah. That would be the way that it would work seamlessly for you. And by the, and, you know, for example, you know, lots of what happens is people add those videos to a playlist so that they can consume them on a different device later.

And so for all of those types of use cases, you know, comments, you know, sharing videos, but also leaving comments, et cetera, requires you to be in a signed in experience for all that to work the way that you're used to having it work on your mobile device. All right. The timeline here is soon. Can you give us a better timeline? I don't have a specific date to give you. I wanted to make sure that I have. I highlighted all the things that I'm excited about in 2022. But, you know, the other thing I'll say is that we will roll out capabilities here incrementally, too.

It's not going to be a one and done thing. But I don't have a specific date I can share on that one today. Another little note just on watching YouTube, it seems like you're going to do a watch party feature with Google duo where you can watch YouTube videos together with somebody else. You know, so I gave you that sort of conceptual example when we were talking about the Metaverse question. earlier. I don't have any specific feature to talk about there today, but just like we talked about collaborative live streaming, you can imagine sort of like a collaborative consumption type experience in the future as well, whether that's something that we build out as part of what we're thinking about with the Metaverse or through some other means. I don't have anything specific there

to share, but yes, that's something that we're also thinking about and working on. It's a Vergecast, so I have to ask, is the first problem just like identifying which Google messaging product to use here. Because there's a lot of that. I mean, I think for my perspective, we're going to work with whatever products, you know, our users are that make it seamless for our users. And so, you know, there's obviously lots of collaborative consumption, collaborative interactivity products out there at Google, elsewhere.

And we want YouTube to kind of work seamlessly from a user standpoint. But I should leave it at that. All right. We got to talk about YouTube TV. You know, Katie and I are both, like, obsessed with YouTube TV. and then we do have a lightning round of feature requests. So we'll get to that. But let's talk about YouTube TV.

There's a line here. This is another line. It's like all the way at the bottom of this letter. YouTube TV is about to get even better with the new interface. That sounds like a total redesign of YouTube TV. What's going on there? Yeah. So even in your own experience, I hope you've noticed that the way the UX and the interface

continues to improve on a regular basis as opposed to kind of like a big bang. And so what we have store in 2022 are some of those sort of critical, you know, again, sort of those critical user journeys. So there's obviously kind of, you know, kind of two of the places are the library and live where, you know, we all as consumers of the product spend a lot of time. And we, over the course of the last few years, there's been lots of sort of behavior that we've seen from our viewers, but also, you know, feature requests that we've gotten in terms of how we can improve those.

So in that line, that's basically what I'm referring to. So in the library, you know, there's lots of content that people have in the library. It's great to see. People are taking advantage of one of our original sort of core concepts of sort of this, you know, DVR and the cloud type concept. And that's where the library has grown. But as it's grown, one of the feature requests often that I hear is about more controls over how you organize that. So how does that play out for, you know, you know, user. So organization is one big theme. Another one, which can apply to the library, but also,

you know, I'll give you an example in the context of live is, you know, there's the live guide that you see, which obviously has to have a time dimension to it. It's obviously got to have, you know, where do you actually find that content, you know, a channel dimension to it. But there are things that we can layer on because this is YouTube TV that you don't get in, you know, those sort of traditional sort of guide type experiences, which is being better around recommendations. We have a sense, obviously, through your use of the platform, how to personalize that live experience in a way that it's a lot more useful to you. And I think that that's one of the things that we see in terms of user behavior, and you may experience this on your own, is, you know, that guide is a pretty long guide. And so how do we make it so that, you know, the type of content that you're really excited about stands out, prominently is more personalized, etc.

So when we're thinking about a redesign, it's giving users more control over organization, but all the other. also doing more with what was one of our fundamental theses of YouTube TV in the first place, which is just smart personalization. One of the things in covering this space that I hear so often is people are so frustrated with the constant carriage disputes for RSNs, right? Like people subscribe to a live TV service to be able, presumably, to be able to watch the TV they want to watch. And it's really, really frustrating for users when they lose, you know, regional sports networks

So I was wondering if you could kind of just explain to me why we see these come up so frequently. On YouTube TV alone, it's, you know, we've seen it with Fox, we've seen it with NBCU. Can you speak to that? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. And I'd be the first to say that, you know, we went through our share of renegotiations with, you know, our content partners last year. You mentioned a couple of them, you know, Disney towards the end of the year, et cetera. And I'd say a couple things. One is that when we built YouTube TV, and this is certainly my experience as a consumer of the product regularly,

we really did want to redesign that consumption experience for our viewers from a product perspective. That's why I focused on some of the features and capabilities that we're building, the introduction of things like 4K plus, et cetera. But we are in that product, as you know, subject to kind of the way that that industry, generally works and how content rights are negotiated. And as we weathered through that, whether it's, you know, in the Disney example or the RSN's example or NBC example, we've had sort of two core principles that we've tried to stick to. The first is, and this is obviously not going to be a shock, but we want to be treated the same way that other platforms of similar size are in terms of,

you know, the business negotiations and how that part of, you know, kind of the industry. actually works, and we've been very clear about that publicly. And then the second is, I understand that frustration from a user standpoint. I'm, you know, one of those users myself, and I happen to be a sports junkie. And so for me, you know, that's really, really important. And so what we always wanted to do is make sure that we really are doing right by the user. And so, you know, in the Disney example, you may recall that we offered a, you know, $15 discount to every user when that, you know, if that content was removed. And it was. It was removed for two days. But despite the fact that it was removed for two days, we honored that $15 discount. And so we really do want to, and as you've seen

in some of our announcements, we've also made it very crystal clear to our users where if that content is removed from YouTube, literally what other platform, including competitive platforms you can go to to go get that content. And so that has been our North Star around YouTube TV. doesn't mean that it was a seamless or smooth experience for our users when that happened, but we really do try to endeavor to the best of our ability to do right by our users. And so that's really what I can say about these negotiations other than the fact that, you know, they're a fact of life in that part of the industry. But we really do try our best to protect our users from kind of downstream effects.

And if they happen, how do we make sure that we ultimately make it up to them? Do you think the storm has passed, right? You mentioned that the three big ones, presumably those deals are longer than six months, right? Like, do you think you're through, I mean, the cable industry is convulsing. It's going through an enormous amount of change. Do you think you're through this patch of renegotiations? Yeah, I mean, there's always conversations happening around, you know, as you know, there's lots of content on the platform. We've added content since, you know, you all probably signed up for the product. And so all of those come in, you know, there, our conversations with our partners don't all happen at once. They happen, you know, kind of in a staggered fashion. So I can't speak to all of them. But hopefully, you know, we can try to maintain as smooth of an experience for our users as possible as it relates to the content. All right. One more on YouTube TV and then we'll do this lighting around.

Can you tell them just like, I've been waiting patiently to do my feature request lighting right? Yeah. It's the Olympics again. Obviously, the Olympics in 4K is a thing. You launched 4K with the summer Olympics. I would say that there was just like not a lot of. a lot of content for the extra money. It's just the state of television is there's not a lot of 4K content. Has it improved since the Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics? And I'm asking that,

it's a loaded question because for me it has not improved. Because my local NBC affiliate does not broadcast in 4K, which means I can't get YouTube in 4K, which maybe Vergecast listeners understand the dynamics of that. I promise you no normal person understands that NBC on YouTube TV isn't in 4K unless your local broadcast affiliate is in 4K. So are you kind of pushing that forward? Yeah. I mean, look, you hit on one of the specific points I would have made in response to your desire. As I said, I'm a huge sports fan myself.

I love to watch it in 4K. So I understand what you're describing. We do have, so I do think it has improved, and it's not improved in terms of, you know, YouTube TV capabilities. It's improved for, you know, the reason that you're describing to. We have the broadest 4K coverage for the Winter Olympics of any U.S. provider on YouTube TV. And so we do have broad coverage. I think we have coverage.

In the summer Olympics, we had it in more than 50 markets. The number only continues to go up. I think the last time I calculated as it relates to the Winter Olympics, the markets where we do have 4K coverage represent something on the order of 70% of U.S. TV households. So it's certainly not 100%. Although, check this with your own experience. You can watch it in 4K on the next day air. Yeah.

And so that does exist. I know it doesn't exist during the live broadcast in every market. And the final point I'll say is that you hit on the limitation, which is we are limited by whether that NBC affiliate is carrying the 4K stream or not. Google is, I'm told, a wealthy company, which seems to be the case. Have you thought about spending the money to help NBC or Fox or CBS or whatever do better for 4K broadcasts and then make that exclusive because they don't want to invest, right? I mean, the Super Bowl will not be in 4K, which seems absurd to me.

And part of it is just cost. Have you thought about saying, hey, we'll make the forward investment for you in cameras and broadcast stuff if you give us the exclusive on the 4K distribution? I mean, we do talk with our partners, not just the broadcasters, but actually in many cases the sports leagues about how to bring innovation to the actual production of sports-related content. I mean, to the, to leagues credit, they are forward looking about these types of things. I haven't talked about this specific application you're describing, which is, you know, penetration of 4K. I got to point off that deal if you do it. If you take that idea,

I'll run with it. So, I mean, we're always talking about ways that we can make it better. But on that specific one, I will certainly take that idea back to the team. But as I said, a lot of this is going to be limitations of what, you know, the broadcasters are looking to do. But we did expand. We know it's something that our sports fans in particular want. And there's been a change even from, you know, the summer Olympics a few months ago. Yeah. You know, what's fascinating is the biggest advance in football broadcasting, at least,

is mirrorless cameras on the sideline, which they pulled from YouTubers, right? They're, like, major sports broadcasts have a YouTuber look to them now because they're using the same cameras of YouTubers. I think that there's a PhD thesis in there for someone if you want to go after it. All right. It's time for the lightning round. I'm going to start with YouTube TV questions. You ready? Okay. August last year, you announced surround sound for YouTube TV. It's on like three smart TVs and maybe one specific model of Amazon fire to stick. What is going on there? How did I know that you were going to ask me about that? Well, what I will say is that there's, as you know very well, there's three things that go into support for that type of

functionality for surround sound in particular. One is, obviously, can we, at YouTube, technically support that? That's work that we had to do and is frankly the work that we have the most control over. The second is getting that feed from, you know, our partners, obviously. And then the third, which is what you're alluding to, is software support, software upgrades to the devices that are out there vis-a-vis the device manufacturers. And you're pointing out something where the rollout of that feature has certainly been a lot slower than I would have liked. And it's primarily for that, it's basically for that third reason. And my hope, though, is hopefully over the next six months, you start to see that in a lot more devices out there as they go through their kind of various

stages of software upgrade cycles. So, you know, I think that if we're, you know, chatting in six months, that situation should be dramatically better. But like, it's not on the Chromecast with Google TV. Like, you can't just like Google meet Rishi and be like, yo, update your product. We're working through all of our device partners on that. So the goal is to get as much coverage, as much coverage as we can. It's a lightning round. I asked you about this on Decoder, but I'm going to ask about it again. Background, playback for YouTube TV on iOS, so you can put it picture and picture. So I do have good news on that. And so as you rightly pointed out, We've supported that feature on Android for some time.

And we're hopefully in the next, I can't again give you an exact date, but hopefully in the next few months we'll be able to support picture and picture on iOS devices as well. Very cool. Did YouTube music get a bump with all the Spotify pane with Joe Rogan? I don't have any concrete data on that. No, I haven't seen. I mean, YouTube music continues to grow. I mean, as you know, music is one of our largest, you know, kind of verticals,

use cases, whatever you want to call on YouTube, both on the main app, but also as part of our YouTube music subscription service, we have over 50 million subscribers now, but I don't have anything specific on that. That was just a wild card. It wasn't a feature request. I was just saying if you answered. This one, basically our entire staff said this one. I'm not eligible for a YouTube premium free trial anymore.

Give me the option to disable the pop-up. You're talking about the promo interstitial. People have used their trials, or they still see the pop-up for the free trial. Yeah, that actually sounds like, that might sound like a bug. I don't think that should be happening. So I will lodge that with the team and figure out a way to resolve that. We should be able to discern whether you're eligible for that, for that offer or not. All right.

This one is, I will say, unhinged. They came from a member of our team. I won't call him out because it is unhinged. Playback speed beyond 2X. That is pretty intense. I mean, I think you know that most viewers pick 1.5. That's sort of the, that is where our users go. I think, too, is pretty intense.

The reason, and I, you know, I can obviously follow up with more specifics on this, but the reason is actually, frankly, technical limitations in terms of all that needs to go into that playback beyond just literally egress of the video, which is, you know, all of our, all of the, all the capabilities that we layer on top of it in terms of, you know, kind of sinking, rights management, all of that sort of stuff. So it's related to kind of technical limitations of being able to do that at sort of very high speed.

Plus also the fact that, you know, most viewers pick something less than two. Unhinged. All right. Last one. This is actually a good one. A fully landscape interface on iPhone, or I guess Android, smartphone. a fully landscape smartphone interface. So I don't have to pick it up while I'm using my elliptical.

Yeah, and when you say a full experience, you mean all the stuff that you enjoy below the video when you're in landscape mode, because obviously the video is rendered in landscape mode. Yeah, I think right now when you go into landscape mode, it's just the video, but you don't get any of the Chrome or the navigation. Yeah, so I fully agree. So we are bringing those controls. First, that sort of tray of controls that you see below the video.

you know, share likes, dislikes, those types of controls as an overlay on top of the video when you're in landscape mode, the ability to sort of navigate more seamlessly while you're in landscape mode without having to either turn the phone or pick it up or what have you. So stay tuned for that. That is definitely something that we want to do. A lot of our consumption on mobile devices, as you can imagine, happens in landscape. All right. And I think we asked about this one already, but it's on our lighting round, duet and stitch and shorts. Yeah, I don't have a specific feature to describe today, but I did allude to the fact that we want to bring those types of collaborative capabilities, both in terms of bringing pieces or clips of content into shorts, but also multiple creators being able to do them simultaneously. So stay tuned for more on that this year.

But that is an area that we're working on. All right. I think we got three out of six. If I'm counting this right, six months for wider surround sound. That's what you said. Yeah, gradually. not six months for anything to happen. I think it'll happen as these various devices roll out. Just go call the Google TV team.

They're right over there, man. It's a good idea, I will. Also, tell them to support 24-frame auto content match, because that's, what are you doing? That's not your problem. I'm just sending the message through. I will deliver it. But it sounds like six months for Surrent and Sound,

hopefully growing background on YouTube TV is coming. Yep. And then landscape interface. Those are the ones. Yeah. And then I don't know what kind of drugs someone's going to have to do to support 3X playback speed, but put it in the mix. I will throw that in there. That might be our most successful lightning around ever.

Neil, this is great. Thank you so much for coming on the roadcast. Katie, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Dela. Thank you, Katie. It's good chatting with you both.