Livestreaming was one of the major advances in social networks last year where it was championed by the likes of Periscope, Snapchat and later on by Facebook Live Video. It was not a new thing per se since YouTube had it before but it has gained prominence from last year and its use is not ending any time soon.
It seems Google doesn’t want to be left in the livestreaming bandwagon thanks to a report by VentureBeat where they learned that the company is working on a livestreaming app. Apparently, the livestreaming app is called “YouTube Connect” where you log in on the app using your Google account and start streaming immediately.
That is not all, as the source telling the publication also revealed that there will be a feed where you can see the latest videos from your friends or those who subscribed to on YouTube. You will be able to view those livestreams within the app and also on YouTube. One misstep is that YouTube Connect apparently does not have Facebook and Twitter share buttons which would be a great way to share your livestreams to the respective networks.
You can understand Google trying to venture into livestreaming quick since the likes of Facebook have properly rolled out the feature and went on to give it priority on the News Feed. Weirdly, Google’s YouTube platform has livestream support but it is limited to some people and it would have been better if they had upgraded YouTube with livestreaming for everyone.
YouTube Connect will join the increasingly burgeoning YouTube services like YouTube Gaming and YouTube Red where the latter requires you to have a subscription. We only have to wait and see if they will rollout and compare it with the other livestreaming options we have available today.