Aug 19, 2011 14:18 GMT  ·  By

Months before Google+ was launched, even before we knew anything about it, Google said that it plans to add a social layer to all of its products. Google+ has been out more than a month now and it's been growing since.

Google took this as a sign that the site is a success, at least thus far, so it's starting to integrate it and its functionality into more of its properties, like it promised.

The latest such move is integration with YouTube, in the form of a link to start a Hangout, now visible with any YouTube video.

All you have to do is hit the share button on YouTube and you'll see a distinct feature enabling you to start a Google+ Hangout with friends.

Google+ Hangouts is a group video chat feature. It's great for a bunch of friends to talk together and just hang out, hence the name. One of its distinctive feature is the ability to watch a YouTube video all at once.

Until now, users had to get the link to the video and then share it via Hangouts. Now, that part of the process is automated and you can easily start a new hangout from YouTube itself.

Google didn't make any official announcement of the new feature, rather as has been the case recently, the change was announced on Google+ by the product manager that handled its development.

"You can now start a Google+ Hangout with a YouTube video, directly from YouTube. Watch with your friends. :)," Google's Brian Glick announced.

"Just click on 'Share' underneath any video, and then click on 'Start a Google+ Hangout' in the bottom right-hand corner," he explained.

It's not a huge feature, but just like all of the other small updates recently, they add up to make Google+ better, on the one hand, and to expose it to more of Google's users who may not have been 'converted' yet, on the other.