This App Will Be Your New (Cooler) YouTube
One of the great beauties of YouTube is that with a click of a button, you can instantly check out footage that was just uploaded on the other side of the world. Maybe it’s a music festival you really wish you could be attending (cough, cough Glastonbury) or maybe it’s something more serious, like the aftermath of natural disaster. But if you’re looking to see what’s happening a little closer to home, we suggest you give this new YouTube Map Explorer a try.
The web app (which is not officially associated with YouTube) lets you browse the endless sea of content on the video-based website by location. Click anywhere on the world map and the app will show you a video uploaded by a user from that location. You can adjust the radius of your search, from zero to within 30 kilometers. (18.64 miles).
While exploring the videos uploaded around the Bay Area (AKA our home), we found a lot of tech-related vids (no surprise there), as well as a video about the owner of Smitten Ice Cream and a commencement address Bill Gates gave at Stanford. When we headed on over to NYC we found ABC’s interview with Taylor Swift, a Boy Meets World reunion clip and a video of Disney taking over Times Square.
As of now the videos that pop up aren’t necessarily the most recent. You also can’t currently zoom into a super specific location (i.e. the block of your apartment) to see what has been uploaded there. However, both of these seem like easy enough updates to integrate in the near future. It’s not a perfect app, but it does make you watch interesting videos that you may not have clicked on otherwise. Because c’mon, after that 20th cat video you should probably switch it up a bit.
What video was uploaded near you? Share a link with us in the comments below.
