After logging into my YouTube account I noticed a small bar on the bottom of my browser window reading “Realtime Sharing”. YouTube has been playing around with realtime statistics for a while (provided you enabled them), however, now they seem to be completely implementing the realtime system into place. It is still opt-in, so you do not have to enable it if you do not want to. I assume this will remain the case for obvious privacy reasons.
Nonetheless, the feature looks rather sleek. It has built in notifications which you can turn on and off to keep track of what your friends are watching. In addition to tracking what your friends are watching you can also see when other users (provided they have realtime sharing enabled) are watching the same video as you are. As I mentioned previously, this functionality was available before, however, was in very primitive stages.
Overall, this is definitely an improved feature and I have enabled it on my account. I currently have 24 invites for anyone who wants them. In order for me to send them to you leave a comment with your YouTube account name and also make sure you friend request me on YouTube (so I can actually send it). My YouTube account is JeffBT.
Below are a few screen shots of YouTube Realtime in action:
What are your thoughts on YouTube Realtime?
