Can YouTube Make the Jump to Your TV With Leanback?

YouTube is not only expanding its reach on mobile devices, but it has its eye on your living room, too. Today, the company is launching the beta version of YouTube Leanback, the company's biggest attempt yet to dominate the TV screen and the living room. YouTube Leanback was actually revealed back in May at the Google I/O conference as part of the announcement of Google TV. Now, the made-for-TV version of YouTube has made it into TestTube, the video site's version of Google Labs. While YouTube has already proven its popularity on mobile devices (100 million mobile video views per day), one giant question remains: Can YouTube Leanback compete with traditional TV shows and video games to become a mainstay of the living room? The Leanback Experience Leanback is a simplified YouTube experience designed for TV screens, especially ones equipped with Google TV. In a demo we received from YouTube Product Manager Kuan Yong and UI Designer Julian Frumar, we learned that pretty much all actions come in the form of four buttons: up, down, left and right. The down button opens up a navigation menu, where you can browse a collection of videos based on categories such as entertainment or music. You can also access your video playlists or just watch random videos. Hitting "up" opens up the quick search box. As you would expect, the design is very simple and intended to allow users to "lean back" and watch YouTube videos one after the other. It was very simple for me to use and understand in my hands-on demo. But Will Regular People Use It? Leanback is just a part of Google's larger strategy to dominate the living room, but it's a very crucial part. If people aren't interested in browsing YouTube on their TVs, then how interested can they be in surfing the web or checking their email from Google TV? YouTube has addressed the TV screen in the past. Last year, the company launched YouTube XL, another stripped-down version of the live video destination optimized for bigger screens. According to Yong, Leanback is actually the evolution and successor to XL, although it will remain live for the foreseeable future. Here's the problem with YouTube in the living room: the site's catalog is mostly composed of short clips. Most of these clips are just two to five minutes long. The average person doesn't go to YouTube to be entertained for two-hour blocks; more often, people turn to TV, where hour-long episodes of House or Saturday Night Live keep them entertained with a single story. If you watched YouTube Leanback for an hour, you'd probably get 15-20 different videos with their own stories. We're not saying consumers won't embrace Leanback; this product is the next logical step for Google. However, unlike YouTube's mobile efforts, Leanback is a gamble — an assumption of risk based on the premise that YouTube can be more than a video destination, it can be an operating system for videos. It means that when you think of video, you think of YouTube. It becomes the central point for your video entertainment. Will we be couch surfing YouTube a year from now? Or will the novelty of Leanback quickly die out in favor of the traditional TV viewing experience we have all come to know and love? Google has a steep hill to climb.

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