YouTube has released its beta service “Leanback” to enable its users to truly sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Leanback is designed to serve a personalized feed of your videos in full screen – without interruptions. Unlike your typical YouTube experience where you select a new video to watch every few minutes from your browser, YouTube’s Leanback is intended to be watched on large monitors but primarily televisions with HD capabilities.
How does it determine which videos to play? The videos are served based on your YouTube account preferences such as videos you subscribe to and videos you have watched. You can also further personalize Leanback by linking your Facebook account to it. This will enable you to be served videos your friends are watching. So you can really think of the service as almost a personalized television channel.
You can access Leanback by visiting: http://www.youtube.com/leanback. I did try out the tool and so far I’m enjoying its simplicity. With Google TV launching later in the year, this feature brings the power of YouTube that much closer to the consumer. This also gives businesses another incentive to create compelling/viral videos which YouTube users will now not only want to share on their computer screens but also in their living rooms with family and friends.
