YouTube to bring messaging app to share videos
Started in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chan, Youtube is currently world’s most popular video sharing website. According to Google, which bought the website in 2006, over 800 million users visit YouTube every month, over three billion hours of videos are watched every month and over 72 hours of video content is uploaded every minute. In the recent years, the website has tried to attract more professional video content producers. It has tied up with several Hollywood studios and gives people a share in the advertisement revenue if they sign up for the Youtube partner programme to produce exclusive content for the website.
With its reach and popularity, it has also emerged as a repository of first-person account. For example in the case of 2011 tsunami in Japan, videos shot by amateur people appeared on Youtube minutes after the disaster. At the same time, its growing popularity has forced it to deal with several contentious issues like copyright infringement, which is considered to be rampant on the website as users often upload copied video content without any regard for the rights of original producers.
YouTube's Messaging App
YouTube is testing a messaging feature in its smartphone app so people can share and discuss videos without resorting to other ways to connect with their friends and family.
The messaging option announced Friday initially is only being offered to a small group of people with YouTube's app installed on an iPhone or device running on Google's Android software. If all goes well, messaging will be included in a future app update available to everyone with an iPhone or an Android phone.
YouTube, part of Alphabet Inc.'s Google, is examining whether the messaging feature will encourage its audience to spend even more time inside its popular video app.
Currently, people typically copy links to YouTube and paste them into text messages or other messaging apps such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
By removing a reason for its audience to switch over to another app, YouTube can generate more opportunities to show ads to the more than 1 billion people who watch video on its service.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook Inc., has more than 1 billion users, while Facebook's own Messenger app has more than 900 million users, posing a threat to other digital services vying for people's attention.
Snapchat is smaller, with about 100 million daily users, but growing rapidly, particularly among teenagers and young adults who tend to watch a lot of video on their smartphones.
