YouTube adds in-app video sharing and messaging feature

After being in test for over an year, YouTube is finally getting its in-app messaging feature. It had a soft launch in Canada earlier this year, and is now rolling out globally to all users.

With the messaging feature you can share your favorite videos with your friends and family directly within the app, instead of copy-and-paste the video link and then sharing on other chat apps. Users can also reply to the videos using text, links to other video and emojis.

Apart from sharing video, you can even chat with your friends, invite others to the conversation or create your own groups (up to 30 participants), just like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

The purpose of the new messaging feature is to keep discussion of videos within the YouTube platform to increase user engagement , rather than sharing in sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The messaging feature can be found on a brand new tab called "Shared" (near Home, Trending, Subscriptions and Library tabs) in the YouTube mobile app. You can select the friends you want to share the videos from the phone’s contacts. Currently the feature is only available for YouTube mobile app, and not for the desktop version.