Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube team integrated a little more tightly with Google+ Feb. 16, allowing users to display their Google+ profile or Page alongside social feeds from Facebook and Twitter on their YouTube channel.
YouTube is also now letting users post a “channel bulletin” in which they share video and playlists in their channel feeds.
When YouTube users are on their feed tab, they’ll see a box called “Post to Feed” that lets users enter a comment and add a link to share a video or a playlist.
When users post the bulletin, it will appear in their channel feed, with the comment below the video. Subscribers to the channel will be notified in their home page feed when a user posts to their feed.
These new features are designed to boost users’ personal and professional brands on the video-sharing site, which could also draw more people to watch users’ videos.
YouTube wants to increase the amount of time the average user spends on the Website from 15 minutes to five hours a day if it can, effectively displacing traditional TV networks such as NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox.
To help boost the amount of time users spend on its Website, YouTube has launched dozens of professionally produced content channels from the likes of Jay-Z, Madonna and other celebrities. The company has also improved its YouTube application for Google TV, which Google views as the ideal access point for YouTube content.
The video network also overhauled its home page to provide consumers more comfortable channel-surfing, part of the video Website’s ongoing effort to be a key broadcasting platform.
There are other ways to boost user engagement besides creating new channels and a Web TV platform, which is why YouTube is adding sharing features that allow users to promote their video content via Google+ and other social networks that have large audiences.
The Google+ profile-sharing option isn’t YouTube’s first integration with the social network.
Since its June launch, Google+ users have been able to watch YouTube videos with their friends, family or colleagues via the Hangouts group video chat application, which enables up to 10 users to watch YouTube clips, music videos or even movies and discuss them in real time.
Google in August added the ability for YouTube users with Google+ accounts to start Hangouts right from YouTube with the click of a button. Google+ and YouTube got even cozier in November, as the company added a YouTube “slider” feature in Google+ that lets users watch videos right from the social network.