What do you think YouTube will do next?

[Epic Troll]

The new channel layout, the new general layout, the ads, what next?

[el Águila]

I don't know, but whatever it is...
I won't like it.

[Erica]

X-tube

[Grumpy Cat]

It's going to have annoying reporters and no one will be able to write funny crap.

[Bradley P]

On the level of "The Expected", the current changes suggest that YouTube will, at the insistence of parent company Google, do everything they can to DEMAND that everyone turn on the following features (user tracking) and that everyone get a Google Plus account even if they have NO use for social networking or weblogging. That, and the site will become stickier, more intrusive, slower, more nit-picky, and more prone to attacking and deleting things _on automatic pilot_ as much of Yahoo! does.

Because you see, Facebook's latest moves are ALL about adopting the worst and most user-unfriendly elements of Yahoo!'s business model, and everyone else including Google is trying to catch up to Facebook, instead of doing their OWN thing.

On the level of "The Unexpected"? Google will buy out a minor competitor to Netflix and perhaps acquire a large piece of the Satellite Radio pie, in an attempt to beat Apple Computer to the punch on this "internet TV", or iTV, business. Roku has already done a lot with the "streaming television" box, so what Google/YouTube will try instead is to get the drop on the _portable television_ market that went _dormant_ with the DTV switch-over. Television hasn't been truly portable since DTV standards demanded _stationary antennas_ for picking up the new digital signals.

Google and YouTube could stand to make money on that by making a specialized smartphone/satellite radio hybrid device that lets people watch TV portably while on the move. The signals would have to be both cellular and satellite based, and the image quality would be typical of YouTube's, but in general the idea is to be where Apple, Roku and Netflix aren't.

It may or may not work--a lot will depend on how angry people get over YouTube's pushing Google Plus as "the next Facebook" to people who don't WANT their privacy invaded, Facebook-style. Or even Gmail style.