YouTube Adds Mobile Chat, Because Google Doesn't Have Enough Messaging Apps

Krystalo writes: YouTube today rolled out the ability to share videos with contacts directly in its mobile app for Android and iOS. Users can chat about shared videos using text, react with emoji, like messages with a heart, reply with other videos, and invite more friends to the conversation (up to a maximum of 30 people per group message). YouTube first started testing letting groups of users share and talk about videos in May 2016. The company then pushed the feature to Canada in January 2017 as a test, since Canadians share more videos online than any other nation. After some tweaks, the Google-owned company is now pushing it out to all its Android and iOS users. "We've been improving the feature since our experiments began last year," a YouTube spokesperson told VentureBeat. "For example, we've made changes to the chat visual; and we've made the video stick to the top of the chat when scrolling down, to allow replying and chatting while watching a video; and we'll continue making improvements." With the new update, YouTube has become yet another Google messaging app, on top of Android Messages, Allo, Duo, Hangouts Chat, and Hangouts Meet.

Re:

[unixisc]

On WhatsApp, I simply paste the link, and the embedded icon finds its way in.

QUESTION

[yuriklastalov]

Is Google retarded?

Emphatically, YES.

Is Google evil?

Emphatically, YES.

Therefore Google is an Evil Retard?

Emphatically, YES.

That is all.

Re:

[geek]

I've de-googled my life for these reasons. It's surprisingly easy to do actually.

Re:

[PoopJuggler]

So you've traded a nice clean integrated suite of web and android apps for a pile of unrelated desktop apps all from different developers with no interoperability and no central design or consistency and no chance of there ever being any in the future. Congrats.

Re:

[JohnFen]

Personally speaking, I don't consider that to be a very big loss. I can do data sharing between unrelated apps without a problem anyway. It's a little less convenient (but only a little), but not enough to matter.

It's about time.

[sheramil]

Youtube comments were nowhere near stupid enough. Now that there's another channel for people to be mindless, braying morons through, perhaps we can achieve something like Peak Stupidity, which will be a valuable weapon in our coming fight against the Singularity.

Give it up already

[JohnFen]

Google keeps trying to convince everyone that YouTube is "social media".

It's not. It's a video distribution channel.

I made a horrible joke about this previously

[AbRASiON]

But maybe it's worth it...

If I recall, it was along the lines of, the head of messaging applications should be brought out into the street and executed in front of his family or something like that.

Either way, I'm not normally one for firing people for mistakes, but after this many? Seriously? MANY MANY , staff, need to be fired, seriously.
SERIOUSLY.

How can they be THIS BAD at messaging on their platforms? It's incredible.
They STILL haven't copied iMessage, which is what most of us want. Utterly atrocious, like most of their changes in the past 5 years. Stop "fixing" things that aren't broken or canceling things which are good.