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

YouTube Adds Mobile Chat, Because Google Doesn’t Have Enough Messaging Apps
Published on August 07, 2017 at 06:00PM
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.