Anonymous playlists

YouTube playlists make it easy for viewers to watch a collection of pre-selected videos. Normally, playlists are created while logged into YouTube and are saved under an account.

But... there's also a way to create an anonymous playlist on-the-fly!

Why would you want to do this? Let's say you're helping a patron find information and there are some relevant videos on YouTube. You can stitch these together as a playlist and send the patron a single link!

Here's an example (using mostly cat videos, of course!):

Cat video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Sn91t1V4g
Cat video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yNSF7ljOoU
Cat video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7ibPk37_U
Cat video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUtn3pvWmpg
Craig's very suspenseful woodchuck video: 
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPh3aOwDZWs

Take this base URL:  
    http://www.youtube.com/watch_videos?video_ids=

and glue the video IDs separated by commas
    G4Sn91t1V4g,3yNSF7ljOoU,0M7ibPk37_U,OUtn3pvWmpg,aPh3aOwDZWs
onto the end.

The resulting URL (which wraps because it is so very long): 

http://www.youtube.com/watch_videos?video_ids=G4Sn91t1V4g,3yNSF7ljOoU,0M7ibPk37_U,OUtn3pvWmpg,aPh3aOwDZWs 

takes you to an Untitled Playlist containing all 5 videos.

Nifty!

Comments

[Rachel]

What a good idea! I can see how this would be helpful for patrons working on resumes or doing stuff in Office.