YouTube is launching what they’re calling their biggest redesign in history today – and, granted, every time a website changes they tend to say that, but the differences here are pretty striking, with sweeping changes to the homepage and channel pages, strongly emphasising social media integration.

Your 2oceansvibe.tv experience will not be effected.

The idea is to improve the way people find videos – you looked at these funny cat videos, and your friends like those sleepy puppy videos, so we recommend these adorable duck videos. Or parkour videos. Or whatever. In practice, it’s part of Google’s big ol’ social media campaign to remind us about that Google+ thing; seeing as I rarely ever use Facebook to look at videos, this part of the campaign might prove more successful than previous attempts.

Youtube’s also going big on courting content producers, setting up contracts with existing TV networks for video streaming services, and, as of last month, established a major deal with Disney to co-produce branded original content to Youtube. Which could be sort of a big deal.

WIRED puts the redesign neatly into context:

The redesign comes in the midst of an entire aesthetic sea change for Google’s internet properties, which began with the mid-summer launch of Google+, the search company’s most earnest attempt at creating a social network to rival Facebook. With Google+, the company rolled out an entirely new integrated interface, incorporating a bar that spans many of Google’s properties.

Since that time, the company has steadily moved forward in redesigning its other web products,including its Gmail service, Google Reader, and most recently, another version of the so-called ‘Google Bar.’ YouTube’s revamp is the next step in that progression.

I mean, initially I was a little worried about having my sordid video history linked to my Google+ profile for all of the social network to see, but nobody’s on Google+ anyway.

[Source: WIRED]