It appears that YouTube is on its way to getting heavier Google+ integration, not that this should come as a shock to anyone.
Google has been very clear about its plan to integrate Google+ across its products, and we’ve already started to see the beginning of some of these integrations in Blogger, Picasa and Google Reader. YouTube is Google’s most popular social property, and it was only a matter of time before Google started to harness this for the gain of its younger social service.
We’ve seen some subtle integrations here and there already: the connecting of the YouTube account to the Google account, the addition of the Hangouts feature to YouTube, and the addition of the YouTube search feature to the Google+ Stream Page.
TheNextWeb was tipped about some new YouTube design tweaks in testing. In addition to various aesthetic changes, were what the publication describes as “deeper Google+ integration,” which “shows off YouTube content your Circles have shared to Google+, letting you surf user-recommended videos from people you might actually care about.”
Now that would really tie users’ YouTube accounts to their Google+ accounts, and could be a very significant factor in Google getting more people using Google+ itself. At the same time, it should make YouTube more social than it’s ever been.
What this says to be me, beyond all else, from the business point of view, is that having a video strategy is only becoming more important. It’s already incredibly beneficial for search visibility in Google Search as well as YouTube’s search (remember, this is the second largest search engine). It’s already beneficial for social marketing as well, if for no other reason than that people like to share videos.
Now, however, you have the potential to get these benefits together right on YouTube itself, and YouTube gets visited a whole lot more than Google+. Now, even if users don’t check their Google+ Streams too frequently, you may be able to get your videos in front of their eyeballs via this YouTube change. This has the potential to be very powerful for users and Google alike.
That’s not to mention Google’s focus on increasing the amount of high quality content on YouTube and getting people to watch it in their living rooms, which should only serve to keep more people on YouTube more often.
