Variety: YouTube Is Shutting Down Its General ‘Trending’ Video Page

Story from Variety:

After 10 years, YouTube is going to sunset its popular Trending page — saying that there are better ways for users to find viral videos and “micro-trends” on the platform.

First launched in 2015, the YouTube Trending page is organized into four sections: Now, Music, Gaming and Movies. The site describes the page as showing “The pulse of what’s trending on YouTube. Check out the latest music videos, trailers, comedy clips, and everything else that people are watching right now.”

But now YouTube is going to phase out the Trending page and the Trending Now list over the “next couple of weeks” and instead will point users to category-specific charts, the Google-owned video site said Thursday. Those charts include Trending Music Videos, Weekly Top Podcast Shows and Trending Movie Trailers (with more content categories to be added in the future).

“Back when we first launched the Trending page in 2015, the answer to ‘what’s trending?’ was a lot simpler to capture with a singular list of viral videos that everyone was talking about,” the company said in announcing the change in a blog post. But today, “trends consist of many videos created by many fandoms, and there are more micro-trends enjoyed by diverse communities than ever before. Viewers increasingly learn about trends in different places across YouTube – from recommendations and search suggestions to Shorts, comments and Communities.” Given the shifting user behavior, YouTube has seen visits to the Trending page decrease significantly, especially over the last five years.

With the more specific trending charts, “we can show a wider range of popular content that’s relevant, and it feels more natural to how viewers already find new videos.”

YouTube will continue displaying personalized video recommendations to users. In addition, YouTube said, it will continue to provide creators tools to determine what’s popular with their viewer base.

Recall that YouTube in 2021 announced that it was ending its annual YouTube Rewind year-in-review recap video series, citing a similar reason. Originally launched in 2011, YouTube Rewind was intended “to celebrate some of the amazing things the YouTube community created.” However, according to YouTube, it had become apparent that “a single Rewind created by YouTube can’t possibly reflect the full breadth of our creator community.”