Google’s YouTube is the leading social media platforms when it comes to sharing videos.
The platform can be accessed from multiple devices, including mobile and PCs.
While many people do not see YouTube as a social network, Google is working on a plan to bring out the social attributes of this video sharing platform. In short, the search engine giant wants to make YouTube more of the same with the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, among others.
According to the latest rumors, Google is working on a new YouTube feature that will let users more than just comment on the videos shared on the platform. Dubbed Backstage, the feature will make the video sharing platform become better at social networking than what is currently offers.
With Backstage, YouTube users will reportedly be able to share a lot more than the videos they’ve watched. These include photos, links, polls, text posts as well as exclusive videos. In this way, the platform will be adding new ways of interaction, something it hopes will eventually let the millions who are subscribed to the service reply to posts in different ways – be it using videos, photos, texts or other type of comments. Apparently, this feature has an internal name within the company and its rich replies.
For a start, Google will only roll out this rich replies feature to select YouTube accounts, probably those with massive followers. The feature will reportedly get its own tab beside the Home button.
Possible release set for this year
While the news of a Backstage feature on YouTube is still a rumor, the same reports add that the platform might go social before the end of this year. Google has struggled in this niche, with Google+ failing miserably, the efforts to take a different approach with this video sharing app could just be another attempt by the company to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With this in mind, it should be interesting to see how this Backstage YouTube feature fits in.