WIRED has released a report stating that YouTube has launched for a small batch of users native sharing inside it’s mobile app. Apparently, this new feature will allow users to share videos uploaded on the platform amongst their friends and have conversations about them. The latter can already be done in the comment section below each video, however this method will supposedly make the experience more enjoyable and easier.
A new tab will show up on the top of YouTube’s UI to access each user’s messages for convenience. In order to chat with others, as of now currnet users with access to the feature can invite other YouTube viewers to join the conversation. It’s unclear whether this will be the way to start a messaging session or not in the future, however in theory it should at least remain similar to this method.
According to WIRED, the idea for a feature of this nature first dawned on a director at YouTube:
Shimrit Ben-Yair, director of product management at YouTube, says the feature was developed after her team hypothesized that a streamlined native way to share YouTube videos would result in more sharing—which is exactly what YouTube wants.
It looks like Google is just using this feature to get users to stay on a) their devices longer and b) the YouTube app to accumulate more revenue from ads whcih occasionally pop up. Nothing like this has been done before in a video sharing app, so it’ll be interesting to see just how successful Google will be with it.
Source: WIRED
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