What Are the Benefits for Subscribing to YouTube?

Subscribing to a user on YouTube means you no longer have to wait to discover the latest news about your favorite YouTube channels. By subscribing to a YouTube channel, the site notifies you any time new content appears in the user's activity feed. When you subscribe to a channel, you can check a box in the subscription form that allows YouTube to send you email updates each time the user uploads a new video.

YouTube can show you on your subscriptions page all the videos the user has commented on, rated, or marked as a favorite the instant the user submits the action on the site. You can find this page at youtube.com/my_subscriptions when logged in to the site. YouTube also displays your subscriptions' latest activities on your homepage when you sign in, in the "Recent Activity" module.

You can easily view all the new activity of all the users you've subscribed to by logging in to your YouTube account, clicking your username in the upper right corner of the homepage, then clicking "Subscriptions" in the drop-down menu that appears below your username. This takes you to your subscriptions page, where you can see a list of all the channels to which you've subscribed. Click on each username in the left column to see the user's latest activity on the site. You can edit the kinds of activities YouTube includes in your subscription by clicking the username, then clicking "Edit Subscription" in the middle column and making the appropriate changes.

If you don't want to keep up with your subscriptions on the site, you can opt to have YouTube send you a weekly summary of all the latest activity from your subscribed channels. Log in to your YouTube account and visit youtube.com/account. Then, click the "Email Options" tab on the left menu. Check the box next to "Send subscriptions updates once each week" in the "Subscription Updates" section, then click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the form. YouTube immediately begins sending you weekly emails detailing all your subscriptions' latest activity, without you having to visit your subscriptions page on the site.

To subscribe to a YouTube channel, log in to your YouTube account, or, depending on the type of account you have, the Google account associated with your YouTube username. Visit the channel you'd like to subscribe to and click the gold "Subscribe" button at the top of the channel. YouTube automatically subscribes you to the channel, but when you click the button, the site also gives you the options in a drop-down box to automatically subscribe to the channel's favorite channels and to have YouTube send you a weekly email notifying you of any new videos the channel uploads. Make the changes you desire and click the "Update" button to finalize your changes.

You can unsubscribe and change your subscription at any time by visiting the Subscriptions page in your account, then clicking "Edit Subscription" link next to the username in the middle column. Make the changes you desire, then click "Save Changes."