Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 9:47 AM PT

YouTube Goes Fully Mobile

YouTube today announced a huge improvement to its existing mobile video offerings: far broader access to watch videos from a far broader range of phones, as well as upload videos of your own. In the past, the service had been available in limited form through deals with Verizon, Helio, and Apple. Now, anyone with a 3G device (admittedly that’s a small fraction of the population) whose handset can handle streaming video can access the service at m.youtube.com and watch “most of YouTube’s catalog, or tens of millions of videos,” according to the New York Times.

Other improvements: Through the mobile version of YouTube, existing users can log into their normal accounts with their library and preferences intact. Video uploads are via MMS. For now, the mobile version will have no ads.

Google had previously told us that the iPhone was not a significant source of traffic to YouTube, though the device had given Google Maps a boost. That’s probably not solely due to the limitations of the video application, but to the slow speed of U.S. mobile data connections. The new YouTube mobile site is available internationally, so look for lots of off-the-cuff cellcam vids from places where people have better phones and access.

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Topic: Mobile

Comments (9)

So, we’ve got mobile video but still no new video-search options.
Google owns Youtube and (as discussed in the article linked to above), the real race is for the search-engine giant, to create a useful search tool for video, before someone else does.

lawrence — 12:11 PM on January 24, 2008 Reply
What link?

Laura — 12:12 PM on January 24, 2008 Reply
Sorry. I thought it would list the website above my comment. It’s at Internet Evolution – http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=525&doc_id=143527

lawrence — 12:13 PM on January 24, 2008 Reply
Guess what? I’ve got useful search tool for video on a mobile- http://www.kyte.tv. You can even download your own content and even do a live stream from your phone! It’s really east too. http://www.kyte.tv !!!

Lauren — 3:51 PM on January 24, 2008 Reply
Well youtube is better than any other mobile video site. i mean honestly do you think that you can find another mobile video site better than it. trust me i have tried looking and i have not found anything better.

anonymous — 3:48 PM on January 25, 2008 Reply
Well youtube is better than any other mobile video site. i mean honestly do you think that you can find another mobile video site better than it. trust me i have tried looking and i have not found anything better, especially since they implemented that new update where you can watch millions of videos from the actual youtube website; instead of those old boring limited videos that they used to have. even though google was the ones that really implemented the update.

anonymous — 3:57 PM on January 25, 2008 Reply
And plus not only that but a lot of mobile phones has to have good reception just to view a video good without it skipping, stopping buffer, and seeing the frames show up and other problems too. but youtube, it doesnt matter. no matter if youre in the worst possible place, lets say the dessert, it stills shows good with no problems. now i have yet to find a site like that.

anonymous — 4:16 PM on January 25, 2008 Reply
I like kyte too!
its fun because my sister lives across the country she posts videos of my nefew and we can chat live with video !
i like youtube too i guess it just depends on what you feel like watching at the moment.
-larry-

larry the cable guy — 5:37 PM on January 29, 2008 Reply
Wow,

Superb blog, about “YouTube Goes Fully Mobile”, I have bookmark it for later review and share with my all friends

Cheers..

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Linkbacks (2)

[...] By the way – YouTube Mobile has now been expanded so that you can watch any YouTube video on your mobile for free (network charges/mobile broadband tarriff may apply, naturally…). THANKS GOOGLE! [...]

Crunchy Links - January 25th 2008 — 9:12 AM on January 25, 2008
[...] permalink YouTube has launched some major upgrades to its mobile video site. While a number of blogs are reporting that Google launched a new m.youtube.com site today, that web page has actually been active since last summer. But when YouTube Mobile launched, users could only access a small subset of YouTube videos. Now Google has made the entire YouTube universe available via the mobile site. The new improved mobile site has all the usual features. You can search, favorite, leave comments, or share videos with friends. Plus you can rack up minutes on your data plan. How can you beat that? Google has also released a public beta of a YouTube Java midlet that should work on some phones. Nokia’s N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120 and SonyEricsson k800 and w880 are officially supported, but you may have some luck getting the program to run on other handsets if you’re lucky. [via NewTeeVee] [...]

Google expands YouTube Mobile: Watch any… — 6:55 AM on February 2, 2008