YouTube has announced a new update to their Creator Studio app that aims to help publishers maximize their content.
Their new addition, called "data cards", will alert creators to user responses and provide tips on how they can use them to advantage - from the YouTube Creator Blog:
"Our data cards provide simple and easy ways to understand your channel stats and suggest ways you can grow your channel. You'll also get links to education resources based on your channel needs to help you bolster your skills."
As you can see from the above GIF, an example alert might be a spike in views - via the app, the creator will get a notification like "One of your videos just had a sudden spike in watch time".
From there, the new alerts feature will provide additional advice on why this matters and how to track the cause of the spike.
The app will also recommend ways in which you can act on that increase, including interacting with new viewers in the comments and determining which elements of the video generated the most interest to double-down on that engagement.
It's the latest effort from YouTube to help creators get more out of the platform - back in June, YouTube released their new Director app which helps guide users through the process of creating a great video.
The update is also along the same lines as Google's recent automated insights option for Google Analytics, which provides similar alerts and recommendations based on Insights data (note: Google owns YouTube)
With increased video competition from other platforms, YouTube's looking to keep publishers from switching across, and providing better transparency and data measures is one way of helping them do that.
And on transparency, YouTube's also released new stats on how they use flagging to detect and remove content that violates their community guidelines.
According to YouTube:
"Over 90 million people have flagged videos on YouTube since 2006 - that's more than the population of Egypt - and over a third of these people have flagged more than one video."
YouTube says that in 2015 alone, they removed more than 92 million videos for violation of their policies "through a mix of user flagging and our spam-detection technology". Those potential violations include violent or graphic content, threats and copyright violations. The number of flags per day is up over 25% year-on-year.
While Facebook, in particular, continues to make inroads on video content, YouTube remains the leading online video platform, for now at least. And while they may have been relatively quiet on live-streaming, and they're not making any big, flashy changes or announcements, you can bet that YouTube has its own plans on how to establish better community connection and maintain their hold on their video crown.