OOGLE decided to hop on that whole “social” and “Web 2.0″ bandwagon by further destroying channel views in YouTube, replacing with arguably “simple” layout what people were already accustomed to. There is a parallel migration permitting people to stick to the old layout, but that won’t last for long. It’s merely a grace period, intended to calm down resentful users of YouTube.
For those who have not seen the new layout, here is my channel as an example. In the past there were a lot more options, both for customisation and for function. Google decided that because “less is more” or whatever we should just accept the removal of perfectly useful (and usable) features.
On the positive side, Google is phasing in free codecs and as more browsers (and more users) adopt support for those codecs we are going to live in a Web without Adobe Trash and the MPEG cartel.