Mountain View, California: YouTube has added a chat feature to its Android and iOS apps on Monday, which will allow the users to message their contacts and share videos with them directly.
So, when users will tap the “share” button on YouTube video, they’ll have the option to send it directly through the YouTube app to their contacts.
“Like chats around the water cooler, shouldn’t sharing a video be as easy as saying, ‘Have you heard this new song,’” wrote YouTube product manager Benoît de Boursetty in a blog post, as said by Variety.
The messaging feature is available via YouTube’s in-app share button, which previously only allowed users to share their videos out to other apps. The user can either share a clip with a single contact or start a group conversation with up to 30 participants — and anyone added to a chat can respond by adding videos of their own.
Once you share the video, your friend and you can just chat about it “right on it”. However, the feature does not show, whether your friends are signed into YouTube or not. So, with those whom you want to share the video, you can invite them. Regardless of whether you invite someone through SMS or in the app itself, once the invite is accepted you can freely share videos back and forth.
Share on YouTube, as the feature is officially called, is at the moment only available via mobile, and not through YouTube’s web or TV apps. Shared videos and associated conversations can be found via a new “Shared” tab within the mobile app.
The roll-out of the feature isn’t entirely surprising. YouTube first started to test the new feature in Canada earlier this year. “Thanks to all your feedback, we made some improvements and are now ready to roll out this new sharing feature to all users globally,” de Boursetty said Monday.
