Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

YouTube to launch the social networking features you’ve always wanted

Saqib Shah
By

A smartphone displaying YouTube on its screen as it lays on top of a laptop's keyboard.
Image used with permission by copyright holder
YouTube will soon let you interact with creators like never before thanks to the rollout of a new social timeline.

The feature, which is internally known as “Backstage,” allows users to share a host of multimedia content including photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with subscribers.

Recommended Videos

YouTube plans to launch Backstage by the end of the year, and as early as this fall, to a select number of influencers on mobile and desktop, according to VentureBeat.

Related

By the sounds of it, Backstage will offer similar social functions that already exist elsewhere on platforms such as Twitter (which lets you conduct polls), and Facebook. This isn’t the first time this year YouTube has emulated those services — in June, Google’s video platform announced it was rolling out its very own mobile live-streaming service, arguably in response to the success of Twitter’s Periscope, and Facebook Live.

The latter live video feature poses the biggest threat to YouTube. Facebook Live is already poaching some of YouTube’s biggest creators with lucrative financial deals. Additionally, Facebook already boasts a massive social networking interface that those same creators can take advantage of to increase their audience.

Backstage is evidently YouTube’s answer to the growing threat of Facebook Live and Twitter. The popular video platform is planning to integrate the social features into its individual channels, alongside the “home” and “video tabs. Instead of relying on an algorithm, the Backstage timeline will appear in a reverse chronological order, with channel subscribers receiving notifications every time content is shared to the feed. Subscribers will eventually be allowed to reply to posts with their own comments, including multimedia posts that could include photos, videos, and GIFs.

Critically for YouTube, Backstage could help it to retain more creators that are busy extending their digital brands across social networks. Like its rivals, YouTube is also keen on encouraging more activity. As we’ve seen with Instagram (which recently copied Snapchat’s Stories feature) the more options you give users to share a status, the more engagement you are likely to receive.

Digital Trends reached out to YouTube for a comment on Backstage, but did not immediately receive a response.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Saqib Shah
Saqib Shah
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…
This long-awaited YouTube TV feature is a channel-flipper’s dream
The previous channel feature on YouTube TV on a TV.

The move from cable to streaming for live TV changed a lot of things. Choice, for one. (We have more.) Price, for another. (You're likely paying less.) But not all changes were great. If you're of the channel-surfing variety — or love to flip back and forth between two channels — you've likely been missing that feature.

YouTube TV — the most popular streaming service in the U.S. with more than 8 million subscribers — has addressed the latter. After having been teased in some A/B testing for a while now (that is, some folks saw it, and most didn't), it looks like the ability to hop back and forth between two channels is now rolling out more broadly.

Read more
If you don’t see CBS in 4K on YouTube TV, try this
Super Bowl in 4K on CBS on YouTube TV.

A quick heads up if you have the 4K add-on for YouTube TV but aren't seeing the option to watch Super Bowl 2024 in 4K on CBS: It's likely because you're using a custom sort on your live channel listings. (Which is something you might have done if you want to hide YouTube TV channels that you never watch.) That'a bad enough for the game itself, and it also means you won't be able to enjoy the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 4K.

This is a known problem — and has been for years — anytime YouTube TV adds a new channel to the listing. If you're not using the default sort on the live channel listings, a new channel will appear at the bottom of the listings, which is bad enough. But worse is that it's hidden by default until you actively go in and unhide it.

Read more
YouTube TV: plans, pricing, channels, how to cancel, and more
The YouTube TV on a Roku TV.

When you think of streaming video, you think YouTube. And so YouTube TV — Google's live TV streaming service — very much just makes sense for a lot of people. Designed for those who want to cut the cord and ditch their cable or satellite subscriptions (and known in the industry as a multichannel video programming distributor, or MPVD), YouTube TV competes in the same arena as other streaming television services like DirecTV Stream (formerly known as AT&T TV Now and DirecTV Now), Sling TV, FuboTV, and Hulu With Live TV.

And YouTube TV offers a unique mix of features that make it very appealing, so much so that it's now the No. 1 service in the U.S. in terms of the number of paid subscribers, with more than 8 million subscribers as of February 2024 — up more than 3 million since Google last gave an update in mid-2022. The popularity is due to several factors. YouTube TV is easy to use. It's got a selection of channels that's competitive with all its rivals. And the YouTube TV price is competitive, too. You're able to watch YouTube TV on pretty much any modern device. And the fact that parent company Alphabet (aka Google) has been marketing the heck out of it the past few years certainly hasn't hurt, either.

Read more