YouTube to include RealTime notifications

I think this is just so cool. Almost everything is becoming a form of social media nowadays. From TechCrunch.com:

The real-time web is all the rage, with FriendFeed widely deploying live feeds earlier this month and Facebook working hard on bringing real-time streams to its homepage. Now YouTube is looking to get in on the action, and is currently testing a new feature dubbed ‘YouTube RealTime’, which allow users to see which of their friends are currently online, the videos they’re watching, and comments they’ve left. Updates will be shown in a persistent toolbar, which means that users will be able to see them no matter where they are on the site.

[...] This is going to be big. While real time feeds are bound to increase engagement on most sites, I think they’ll work especially well on YouTube. Many people go to YouTube without any particular video in mind - they simply go to watch something. Now as they browse through the site looking for the latest videos to go viral, they’ll also get constant status updates as their friends stumble across cool videos too. It’s tough to ignore a popup notification that your friend just watched a video called “Cat rides skateboard” - you’re going to want to see for yourself, and then your friends will see an update alerting them about the video, creating an endless loop.

Not only that, but YouTube has already sent out preliminary invites for individuals to begin playing around with the newest interface and networking capabilities. TechCrunch gave out 25 of them, and everyone of those 25 people who claimed the invitations got 25 invites of their own. Awesome.

I might not agree with the author's commentary that users just find themselves on YouTube to watch whatever they stumble upon, maybe because I don't just hang out on YouTube all day. I usually have an agenda, like "I really want to see the end credits of Buckaroo Banzai right now!" or something. But it is true that video suggestions on YouTube are just cutting out the middle man of Facebook or email in order to share clips with friends and family, which I find rather brilliant and interesting. I already have a YouTube account, but I don't really use it for any specific purpose. Maybe after this RealTime feature begins, however, that will be a different story.