The days refusing to let your child watch cartoons on YouTube by himself as you were afraid he/she would watch something inappropriate are over. YouTube Kids soon to be released,is a new app for children that will run only cartoons and kids shows.

According to YouTube’s product manager, Shimrit Ben-Yair, they have been receiving a lot of demands from parents who were asking them if there was a way of making YouTube a better place for children.

The new app released by Google Inc.’s online video service will be available for smartphones and tablets and reportedly, it should feature original episodes of popular tv shows for children, such as “Thomas the Tank Engine” and “Sesame Street”, but would also include content from the plenty of kids friendly channel featured on YouTube, reported a source familiar with the subject.

Tuesday night has been released a screen shot of the app, which showed the titles mentioned above but there were also mentioned “Reading Rainbow”, “Mother Goose Club” and many others. The app will be called YouTube kids and is expected to be free and will work as a separate app, from the mainstream YouTube app. The design of the new app will have a kids friendly look, minimal scrolling and bulbous icons, added the source.

The home screen, will have large tiles, with images of popular television shows and four simple icons consisting of, music, shows, explore and learning, which will allow children to browse trough the top videos. Trough the list of approved content, there will be National Geographic Kids videos, and the puppet masters from the Jim Henson Company.

The app will also include features for parents, for example there will be available a timer which parents could use to control how much video kids are allowed to watch. However, there is one small thing, that might disappoint certain people, for the beginning, YouTube kids will not run on Apple devices. After the release, the app will be available only for Android operating system devices.

Google is planning to announce the new app on February 23d, when the executive of YouTube, Malik Ducard, will appear at the Kidsscreen Summit, a conference regarding the kids entertainment industry. Launching an app like this, that is destined for children use, Google will have to agree with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which is inspected by the Federal Trade Commission.

One of the COPPA rules, states that websites that are created for children must notify parents if collecting personal information.

So far, it is not clear whether the new app will generate money for YouTube, and another thing that is uncertain is how would content associates make money. There is the option of generating revenue by advertising ads in the app, but this seems to be still under discussion. Deciding to do so, Google will surely find a lot of advertisers willing to buy spots.

The vice president and media director of advertising agency, Starcom, Darcy Bowe, stated that her clients are affected by the lack of digital advertising places adjusted for children. Instead, they tend to put more money into television ads. Until now, YouTube has not been an option, as the site is designed for people from the age 13 and above, Bowe added.

When asked if they would be willing to advertise on a kids-safe YouTube app, Bowe, replied that everybody would be interested and would love the idea.

YouTube videos addressed to children have had an incredible audience, the family entertainment channels have risen with 200% in views, every year, compared to 50% for the rest of the site.
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