YouTube's new messaging feature will make sharing videos a breeze

The process of sharing your favorite YouTube with friends will soon take place entirely inside of the YouTube app. That's thanks to a new messaging feature the video giant is currently testing, through which users can share videos and chat about them without ever leaving the YouTube app.

From Wired:

Starting today, so-called native sharing will go live for a small percentage of YouTube users. They can then spread the feature to their friends by inviting them into conversation threads. Friends can chat about the shared video right inside YouTube's mobile app. They can also reply with another video. The message threads reside within a new tab on YouTube's mobile app so groups can dip in and out of conversations and catch up on what they missed or add new videos of their own.

While messaging may seem like an odd fit at first, it makes a lot of sense for YouTube. Dedicated chat threads within YouTube will eliminate the need to fiddle with copying links over to other apps. And, of course, there's also the added benefit that users will spend much more time inside of the YouTube app itself.

There's no specific mention as to whether the feature is platform-restricted at the moment, but it should gradually make its way to more users as chats are created across the YouTube community.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster