Google’s YouTube has finally entered the social media stream with the addition of a new feature that allows users to share their videos on Facebook, Google Reader, and Twitter. This is for those who upload videos to YouTube and goes along with the already ubiquitous share button.
Most users are just saying “gee, it’s about time, YouTube.” The release of this new feature was added with little fanfare, but it immediately got some attention around the Web. I learned about it through a tweet from my own stream.
It’s obvious that YouTube probably has this sharing in the works for the “favorites” and may be working towards a FriendFeed-style feed to go with Google Reader. This could mean trouble for startups like TwitVid, which allow for video sharing directly to your Twitter stream.
TwitVid, however, still has the advantage of allowing commentary alongside the video built-in (so your tweet has comments plus the video link) and it publishes nearly immediately. YouTube still has a long lag before the tweet and Facebook updates actually take place—ten to fifteen minutes, generally.
In my opinion, this is a nice little addition to YouTube, but probably is a bit “too little, too late.” There are already so many easier ways to share YouTube videos that I doubt this will get a lot of play. It’s still just as easy to send a tweet with a shortened URL as it is to have it sent automatically in this way. Faster too, generally.
Most in the industry suspect that Google is about ready to quit neglecting YouTube and may have some things up their sleeve for release soon. Google doesn’t generally sit on their haunches and they wouldn’t acquire something as huge as YouTube, shut down their own Google Video service, and then just sit around and look at YouTube wondering what to do with it.
That’s Microsoft’s job. Haha
