YouTube adds ‘breaking news’ section to homepage and mobile apps

YouTube is usually one of the first places to look for breaking news, and now Google seems to be making that even easier by adding a “Breaking News” carousel to its mobile apps and homepage, as spotted by Android Police.

The new section appears similar to a recommended channel on the web homepage, and as a scrollable carousel in the mobile app between suggested videos. At the time of publication, the breaking news section was largely focused on reports of Steve Bannon leaving his position at the White House, but Android Police noted that it had been filled with videos regarding the Barcelona terror attack earlier in the day.

For now, it’s unclear whether Google is populating this section algorithmically or curating content by hand, or whether or not it’ll even appear at all times or just during breaking news cycles. Still, it’s another useful addition to the front page of YouTube that will hopefully help keep people informed during fast new cycles.

YouTube starts delivering ‘breaking news’ on its homepage across platforms

YouTube has started rolling out a “Breaking News” section in people’s feeds today across platforms as Alphabet continues to tailor custom content playlists to users logged into Google Accounts, Android Police reports.

For most, YouTube is a place to hop from one video to the next and descend down rabbit holes, but browsing anything like a feed has become less straightforward than other platforms, which makes the breaking news section an interesting addition.
As the video sharing site has grown older, the content has grown more produced with YouTube personalities mounting “celebrity” careers, while commentary-heavy videos grow in popularity over the raw video that is more common on Facebook and Twitter.

For YouTube’s part this has grown to be a very valuable distinction. While Facebook’s has seen its video views increase heavily by way of quick-and-dirty videos, YouTube seems to be somewhere where people invest major time browsing, even if there seems to be just as much noise. In June, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the site had 1.5 billion watching an hour of video each on mobile alone.

Breaking news may initially seem to be a bit of an unusual direction for the site, but as Google works on courting publishers through special programs with AMP, it may be interesting to see how YouTube treats partnerships with 24-hour broadcast news publishers who already put a lot of content on the site.

Today, my “breaking news” tab had a lot of news on Bannon’s exit from the White House. Most of the stuff was an hour or two old, so it’s not BREAKING quite as much as other locations but it offers a chance to see stories evolve on YouTube in a much more packaged way. For now it seems that YouTube is mostly turning to traditional networks as the sources. Going with established media might be a more straight-forward start but it will be interesting to see how much it adjusts to people’s viewing habits and whether more bombastic YouTube personalities find their way into the tab sharing their thoughts on the day’s latest news and begging you to like and subscribe for more.