YouTube Slam begins video clip battles for users' votes

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 28, ARMENPRESS:

Viral videos are being pitched against each other in a battle for popularity under YouTube's new Slam service.

The Google-owned clip website has announced that it will put a new crop of videos "head-to-head" each week and ask users to vote for their favourite, BBC reports.

The firm described the offering as "a video discovery experiment".

Experts said the move was designed to keep visitors on YouTube for longer and deepen their ties to the website.

YouTube's blog said it was initially launching the service with five categories- comedy, cute, music, bizarre and dance.

Users' votes will determine where the clips end up on a leader board. Those taking part are promised "points for predicting the crowd favourites", allowing them to see how their predictive power compared to other players at the end of each week.

"You could help uncover the next big thing," said the firm's software engineer, Tomas Izo.