Yahoo said at the time, “While we love Delicious (and our users love Delicious), we wanted to find a home for the product where it can receive more love and attention. We think Avos is that place.”

It looks like that may indeed be the case, as Avos is giving Delicious a refresh. This is supposed happen “later this year,” according to the New York Times, which reports that Chen and Hurley say it will resemble the original Delicious, but with a new design using new software and new systems for tagging and organizing links. Jenna Wortham reports:

The home page would feature browseable “stacks,” or collections of related images, videos and links shared around topical events. The site would also make personalized recommendations for users, based on their sharing habits. “We want to simplify things visually, mainstream the product and make it easier for people to understand what they’re doing,” Mr. Hurley said.

Chen and Hurley reportedly want to solve the information discovery/overload problem that many others are trying to solve, but they may be headed for a similar path that others are also traveling. These solutions often tend to just become one more thing to look at, rather than a filter for noise.

The hard part is getting users to add one more thing to their daily routine. They’re going to have their work cut out for them in that regard, but it should help that Delicious is already an established, brand, which the two acknowledged in the NYT interview.

We’ll be on the lookout for what they come up with, but I’m starting to wonder if the information discovery/overload problem can really be solved. I think it’s more something just to deal with, and we all have our routines.

The India YouTube will feature regional and localized content with a search hompage that focuses on videos and links related to India. The content uploaded by users in India would appear as top favorite videos and recommended content on the site.

"We are very excited to bring a local version of YouTube to India considering the passion of users here for music and entertainment." said Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube.

"For a culture that is steeped both in video and in storytelling, and where everyone has a voice -YouTube India will not only offer Indian users more relevant content but also provide a platform to share India’s unique and diverse culture and lifestyle with the largest online video community in the world."

YouTube has struck deals with a number of partners for its launch in India, including Zoom TV, India TV, Ministry of Tourism, NDTV and Rajshri Films.

India is the 20th country where YouTube has launched a localized or regional version of its site. YouTube will be competing with a number of similar Indian video sharing sites, but its brand and popularity will help it succeed.
 

Steve Chen – YouTube Co-Founder

In response to Sarah Meyers‘s question on the subject, Chen responded, "2008.  We’ll do it this year. . . .  Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year."

Of course, when a person says they "hope to actually do it" sometime within the next nine months, you don’t bet your house on "it" happening.  The financial and technical support may not be in place, despite Chen’s wishes.

Also, there’s the matter of whether YouTube should offer live video.  A lack of editing isn’t likely to do viewers any favors; there’s enough boring and/or stupid content on the site already.  Furthermore, my colleague David Utter pointed out that the interest of an industry starting with "p" and ending with "orn" could complicate things for advertisers and YouTube admin alike.

Meh.  We’ll see what happens.  Yahoo is already testing live video’s waters, so perhaps Google and YouTube will learn from its experience and have a great product from the get-go.

It’s not unconditionally devoted to this objective – an increase in YouTube’s maximum allowable file size (without a corresponding increase in maximum allowable video length) occurred without much fanfare.  Still, people who are sick of seeing fuzzy videos should be happy with the result.

“Chen told me that he expects that high-quality YouTube vids will be available to everyone within three months,” reports Rafe Needleman.  “Although YouTube’s goal, he said, is to make the site’s vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it.”

Hopefully there will even be an option for people with slow connections to see HD clips – if they’re willing to wait, why not?

Anyway, aside from issues of revenue-sharing, this development should address one of the biggest complaints about YouTube.  Look for fans to rejoice and competitors to frown as the three-month mark approaches.

This has been the biggest thorn in YouTube’s side ever since Google (with its bags of cash) bought the company. Viacom almost immediately slapped them with a billion-dollar infringement lawsuit.

In his post at the Google Blog, Chen reiterates a complaint made when copyright complaints first came flying at YouTube like teams of angry hockey dads. "Some legal departments take down a video one day and the marketing department puts it up the next. Which is their right, but our community can’t predict those things, and neither can we."

What they can do, says Chen, is employ Audible Magic for help identifying copyrighted audio content. Video content is trickier though and they are working on technology to solve the problem.

Chen writes:

We are beginning tests on an automated system to identify and match specific videos. The technology extracts key visual aspects of uploaded videos and compares that information against reference material provided by copyright holders.

Achieving the accuracy to drive automated policy decisions is difficult, and requires a highly tuned system. Once accuracy is achieved, the challenge becomes speed and scale to support the millions of people who use YouTube every day.

We are working with some of the major media companies to test what we have developed. We’re excited about the progress so far, and we’re dedicated to making these tests successful, but as always with cutting-edge technologies, there’s no guarantee of success. 

Given the amount of money the company will lose if plaintiffs like Viacom are victorious, it seems Chen and company should go beyond we’ll-give-it-a-try-but-can’t-promise.

But with technical minds at Google coupled with deep pockets for hiring the best there is, that not-completely-sure-if-we-can-do-it attitude has a chance of changing.