TO YouTube It is usually considered a video platform rather than a social network, although it shares many common characteristics of these to which it has recently added a new one that makes it even more similar. At the end of last year, it began testing in Poland and Ireland a ‘new’ way of sharing videos that, in practice, means the return of direct messages between users. In March it expanded to more countries, including Spainallowing users to share videos, Shorts and live broadcasts, in addition to chat about them or whatever they want directly on YouTube. The platform limits this function to users over 18 years of age.
Direct messages on YouTube first appeared on 2017 within the mobile application, later renamed as ‘Messages’. They allowed users to chat in one-on-one conversations and share clips directly, but that all came to an end on September 18, 2019when Google decided to close the feature after giving users a month to download a .zip file with their previous conversations.
It’s not really known why YouTube removed the feature, but then users were encouraged to move to the comments section, tab posts Community already YouTube Stories. The previous version suffered moderation problemswhich has led Google to apply stricter security standards and age verifications for this new stage.
This is how you can use direct messages on YouTube
Yesterday YouTube made a publication on its blog indicating that it was deploying direct messages in USA. According to the company, just tap on ‘the new messaging icon’ of the app, which should be displayed in the upper right corner. In my case, that icon does not appear yet, but the function is available through the second, somewhat cumbersome, way that YouTube offers for messaging.
The downside is that starting a conversation is not as simple as searching for a contact. First you have to send an invitation link from a specific video through the option Shareand that link must be sent through an external application such as WhatsApp, iMessage either SMS. The other person then accepts the invitation and the chat window on YouTube opens. This additional step is intended to avoid spam and unwanted messages.
Once connected, you can send text messages freely, react to content in real time, unsend messages by long-pressing them, delete entire conversations, and block or report contacts if necessary. The only multimedia content that can be shared within the chat is YouTube contentincluding videos, live shows and Shorts. No images, GIFs or files are allowed.
In the absence of the new button mentioned by YouTube, you can resume a chat and access the direct message tray via notifications icon.