The Rest of the Day: YouTube Gets Its Own in-App Messenger
When I think of YouTube conversations, I think of the comment section, one of the last bastions for thoughtful discussion and politeness on the Internet. (Not) . But YouTube knows you’re talking about videos directly with your friends, so why not bake a messenger right into the app?
- YouTube is adding messaging functionality to its mobile app so you can chat with friends while watching videos . They call it “natural sharing” because you share videos in the app and invite friends to chat. There is some logic to this: people do share videos on other platforms and discuss them in other apps, so why not keep the conversation in one place? But it’s also a feature that literally nobody asked for or expected. Today it is available to a small number of users. [Wired]
- Google Photos has new commenting and sharing features today . People who join a shared album can now add comments, and when you submit an album, you also get suggestions for which photos of your own to add. I like to think that Google uses scrapbooking to view all of your photos and make suggestions. [Google]
- Facebook will add support for 360-degree photos soon . This can be a fun feature because you don’t need any special hardware; any smartphone can take 360-degree photography using techniques similar to panorama shooting. (However, it is not yet clear if you will need a third-party photo app.) [BuzzFeed]
- A new preview build of Safari arrived today with fixes for 1Password integration and Netflix playback . But in a stable build, of course, all this is already there. [9to5Mac]