14 DAY TRIAL // YouTube is, by definition, social. The biggest component of the site is not necessarily the videos but the possibility to share them. This leads to a situation most have went through, you want to watch a video along with your friends, but there's no simple way of doing that. This is where YouTubeSocial comes in.
YouTubeSocial enables you to watch any YouTube video along with your friends. The premise is simple and there's a clear need for something like this.
Sending a link through IM and coordinating with each other to watch a video hardly works for two people. Add a few more and it becomes impossible.
YouTubeSocial does all of the work for you. Just type in "social" inside the link to any YouTube video, instead of "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrdsZePoEyU" type "http://www.youtubesocial.com/watch?v=CrdsZePoEyU".
This trick solves one of the biggest problems of new services, having to remember their name or addresses. YouTube Repeat, a simple site which enables you to watch a video over and over again, uses the same trick, just add "repeat" to the regular URL.
With YouTubeSocial, after you've entered the site you can share an URL provided by it with your friends who will then be able to 'join' the video.
Alternatively, you can use the Facebook integration and get access to your friends list so you can pick the ones you want to share with. They'll be notified via the Facebook chat that they've been invited.
YouTubeSocial has just been launched and more services may be integrated at a later point, like other social networks and IM services. The idea is good and the implementation seems solid, but it remains to be seen if users will go to the extra steps to watch videos together.
And there's always the chance that YouTube may launch something very similar by itself, effectively killing the service, especially with Google working to add a new social layer to all of its products. [via TechCrunch]