YouTube app introduces social sharing and chatting features starting in Canada

YouTube has began rolling out social features within the YouTube application for Canadian users. Canada has been picked for the introduction of the new features, as Canadians on mobile phones share videos 15 per cent more than other countries. However, similar to the invite only mechanism for the spread of Gmail invites, Canadian users sharing videos with friends and family members from around the world, will allow those users to start using the sharing features as well.The YouTube application now has a new tab called Sharing. Within the application, users can add contacts to share the videos to, and create groups for chatting. Users can invite additional users to the group, and share even more videos in the same chat. All these capabilities have been added within the YouTube application itself, for both iOS and Android users. Users no longer have to copy and paste the link of a video to another instant messaging application, the functionality of group discussions around a video has been added by YouTube itself.To see the shared application, users have to sign in to a YouTube account that has a channel. The feature was initially introduced on a pilot project in Canada, and is today rolling out in Canada, and through Canada, to the world. All the previous shared videos to and from contacts are automatically added to the shared tab. The sharing feature shows a short list of YouTube contacts that users frequently share videos with.