YouTube has announced that it's introducing YouTube Recap for video watchers.
This will recap your year of watching, focusing in on and highlighting interests, while also assigning you a personality type based on your watching habits.
YouTube has announced that it's jumping on the recap bandwagon with YouTube Recap, so you can see exactly how much time you spent watching all those videos online – and where your interests fall. This is a new – and terrifying – insight into just how much time you're spending on YouTube.
While summarising music tastes has been something that YouTube Music Recap has offered for a few years, the spotlight now falls on YouTube proper, with its first ever Recap for video watchers.
YouTube says that this is in response to requests for the feature – including from some big name YouTubers, like Marques Brownlee – with Recap appearing on a user home page. It's rolling out in the US first, but will appear for the rest of the world over the rest of the week.
This Recap will bubble up interests, with up to 12 different cards covering your top channels and how your viewing habits have changed. You'll also be given a personality type – a bit of judgy fun from Uncle Goog there – as it reveals exactly how you flittered away your time online.
Those personalities will include "Adventurer", "Skill Builder" and "Creative Spirit". But here's the rub: YouTube tells us that the most common personality types are "Sunshiner", "Wonder Seeker" and "Connector" – with "Philosopher" and "Dreamer" less common. I wonder if there's a "Confused DIYer" personality type?
YouTube reveals that the final version Recap came after running through over 50 different concepts and 9 rounds of feedback.
Of course, users are encouraged to confess all on social media by sharing their guilty habits, so the rest of the world can learn what you actually did with those hours at work when you were supposed to be... er… working.
To qualify for YouTube Recap, users need to be signed in to their Google account, with enough watch history for Google to make some decisions and string everything together. That means that if you're in the habit of pausing your watch history or if you have auto-delete on, then you won't get a Recap. Anyone would think you had something to hide, eh?
The festive recap is now an exciting punctuation of December each year, with Spotify having started it all in 2016 with Spotify Wrapped. Now every service wants to tell you what you listened to, how much you worked out, summarise your sleep trends and a whole lot more.
