YouTube to become full social network with Backstage

PanARMENIAN.Net - YouTube, amid competition from Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, is developing a feature internally called Backstage where users can share photos, polls, links, text posts, and videos with their subscribers. Backstage is expected to launch by the end of the year, possibly this fall, on mobile and desktop, initially with select popular YouTube accounts and with limited features, VentureBeat reports exclusively.

Akin to a Facebook Timeline or Twitter profile, Backstage will live alongside the Home and Videos tabs within individual YouTube channels. Posts shared to Backstage will appear in reverse chronological order, and, crucially, will also appear in subscribers' feeds and notifications, making them highly visible to fans.

While Backstage is expected to introduce entirely new types of content to YouTube, including tweet-like text posts and topical polls, it also presents new opportunities for video sharing. Backstage will eventually enable users to share both traditional YouTube videos and Backstage-only videos, possibly creating an opportunity for more intimate, or even ephemeral, video sharing between YouTubers and their fans.

YouTube hopes to spur new types of conversation with Backstage, and will eventually allow subscribers to reply to posts in myriad ways - with photos, videos, and other types of comments - a feature the company is calling "rich replies" internally, VentureBeat says.

Facebook has already shown that a social network can be a video-viewing destination. And Twitter, too, is vying to be not just a second-screen viewing experience, but a primary place to watch programming like the Olympics and NFL games.

But whereas Facebook and Twitter have layered video atop social features, YouTube has little choice but to pursue the opposite path. YouTube doesn't want to be the first or the second screen; it wants to be both.

Reached for comment on this report, a Google spokesperson told us "we don't comment on rumor or speculation."