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From the folks who brought you the Pivot Conference and Hasai Marketing comes an infographic that tells the story of 7 companies that, you guessed it, made significant pivots in strategy to successful ends. Included are gaming companies, social networking sites and group buying pioneers.

From instagram's departure from a check-in model (ala Foursquare), to YouTube's online video dating histories, this infographic should remind you that no matter what you are building, be ready to change directions if necessary.

Today Google rolled out the latest of its Google+ integration projects. This time it was YouTube, which at the same time launched a snazzy new design. The redesign is not only visually more colorful and appealing, it also promotes sharing in a big way. YouTube is enabling you to autoshare to four different social networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Orkut. But wait... notice anything missing there? That's right, Google+ is not included in the autosharing.

On the face of it, this makes little sense. Now I can 'like' a video on YouTube and it automatically shows up on my Facebook wall and Twitter feed. That's actually very cool. It saves me having to manually share things, yet I still control the autosharing (as I have to click the 'like' button in YouTube). Indeed this is frictionless sharing the way it should be - the user is in control of what gets shared, but it's made much easier for them. So why on earth isn't Google+ part of the autosharing?

The YouTube redesign we got a sneak peak into last month is now going live for all users. It has been reborn as a social and customizable media site, letting users customize their lists of channels right on the front page, as well as share to Google+ and Facebook.

It might be surprising to see Facebook integration so prominently on YouTube, with Google+ is trying to make a name for itself, but think of it this way: Facebook is huge. YouTube is huge. Google+ is not yet huge. What better way for Google to introduce Facebook users to Google+?

I've written about Wistia before, an enterprise video hosting and analytics vendor. This week they have made big improvements to their embedded video player, including more customization of controls, a cleaner look, and some other small touches. What was once a solid player is now a great player. If you are looking around for a place to host your videos, this should be on your short list. They provide terrific customer service and analytics features too.

A leaked YouTube redesign caught by Business Review USA shows a starkly different layout that emphasizes social sharing. It features Google+ and Facebook sharing tabs on a prominent profile sidebar. The inclusion of Facebook is surprising, but YouTube is a popular destination, which offers a perfect opportunity to introduce Facebook friends to Google+.

YouTube has been testing this design with a small percentage of users for several weeks. YouTube's integration with Google+ actually began in October, when Google enabled users to connect their YouTube and Google+ accounts. This brought a "Posted to Google+" tab of videos to users' YouTube homepages. But the leaked redesign takes the integration further, turning the homepage into a news feed that tracks trending and popular videos. It also emphasizes user profiles, showing Google's intentions to unify users under one Google+ identity.

Last summer, YouTube embarked an ambitious film project of the sort that is only possible in the 21st century. They asked thousands of people all over the world to document their experiences on a single day and upload the footage.

The result, titled "Life in a Day," is a 90-minute film directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott. It documents human life on Earth for one day, insofar as such a thing is possible within a span of 90 minutes. The movie, which has already premiered at a few festivals, is now available in its entirety on YouTube.

In a show of good faith today, Google touted the fact that it has refused to cooperate with local law enforcement agencies in the U.S. who requested the removal of YouTube videos of police brutality and criticisms of law enforcement officials. Google cited its transparency report from the first half of this year, but to mention it today is telling. With violent crackdowns at Occupy Oakland this week, citizen media like YouTube have been a vital channel. From Google's mid-year transparency report:

"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."

Real-time entertainment traffic dominates the Web now; and over half of it happens on devices other than a PC or laptop computer. This according to a new report by research company Sandvine. The report states that "by volume, 55% of Real-Time Entertainment traffic is destined for the television (either directly to a smart TV or via an intermediary like a game console or set-top device), a mobile device or tablet." Those statistics, along with data from Mary Meeker's Web 2.0 Summit presentation last week, emphasize just how far we've come in the post-PC era.

Of the non-computer traffic, much of it comes from Netflix (on TVs), Facebook and YouTube (both mostly on mobile devices).

Sixteen months after a federal judge threw out Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google, the two companies are back in court. Specifically, Viacom is asking an appeals court to revisit its case against YouTube, which they say is guilty of a whole lot of deliberate copyright infringement.

The original case was thrown out last year when a U.S. District Court judge ruled that YouTube was protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which essentially argues that site owners are immune from the legal implications of what the site's users do, such as uploading copyrighted material.

Google is rolling out the ability to link YouTube accounts with Google Plus. The link will add videos shared with you on Google Plus to your YouTube homepage. In a public Plus post, Nirav Mehta says that the process takes some time to complete initially.

To link your accounts, go to the Sharing tab in your YouTube account settings. YouTube and Google Plus already have some integration; Plus users in video Hangouts can watch YouTube videos live together.