YouTube’s water cooler for web video

If visual information can improve understanding of spoken words as much as sixfold according to research, it shouldn’t be a surprise that use of video as a means to communicate an idea or aid learning is shooting through the roof.

As with so many other media, finding what interests you becomes a chore when you spend increasing time searching. Popular video-sharing sites like YouTube are now seeing 35 hours of video uploaded every minute, a huge amount of content by any measure.

Here’s a neat aid to quickly keeping tabs on trending videos on YouTube – YouTube Trends, launched last week. And in keeping with the research I mentioned earlier, here’s a video that explains what it is and why it’s cool:

And YouTube’s words:

[…] YouTube Trends features new algorithmically-generated feeds that highlight which topics and videos are trending right now. The site also offers a ‘top videos’ module and a blog with more in-depth explorations of videos, trends, news, and cultural phenomena as seen through the lens of YouTube. We’ve also created a Trends Dashboard that lets you quickly explore what’s popular in different cities in the U.S. and around the world, as well as within specific demographic groups.

YouTube Trends. Very useful.