YouTube gets college channel, Twitter button, and more
Google-owned video site now has a channel dedicated to content from colleges and universities, a button to easily Twitter videos, a progress bar for video uploads, and login integration with Google.
Google has been busy over the past two days with announcements related to YouTube. From Twitter buttons to a new YouTube channel for educational content, there's quite a bit to see.
Dubbed YouTube EDU, the online video site's newest channel is a volunteer project that highlights the educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. It boasts videos from educators all over the world who placed their instructions and other content on YouTube. The videos are pulled in each day from the main site and are arranged by title or number of views.
Google also announced Thursday that it has added a "share to Twitter" button under the share options on all videos on the site. Users who click the button will be able to send a video directly to their Twitter stream with a pre-filled tweet. So far, the video URLs won't be shortened, but the company did say in a blog post that that feature will be added "down the road."
Google also announced that YouTube will now feature an upload progress bar that lets users know how much time is left in their upload. At some point in the future, it plans to add an "estimated video processing time" feature for all videos.
Those who already have Google accounts will be happy to know that the company will now allow users to log in to their YouTube account with their Google.com credentials. There's just one catch: the user's YouTube account must be associated with their Google account.
Finally, Google is poised to start linking its TV ad business to YouTube. According to the company, it will start selling companies on video advertisements that will be placed on television, YouTube, and other websites that support video.