Google's Uptime app offers unique way of watching YouTube videos with friends

Google opened the Area 120 startup combinator last year, which allows its employees to work on their own business ideas. Now, the first product developed at the incubator, called Uptime, has been officially announced. Uptime is a group video messaging app that lets you watch YouTube videos with your friends.

It’s quite simple to use. First, you have to sign up with your Google account and are then presented with the option of checking out a short tutorial that explains how the app works. Once that’s out of the way, you can connect with your friends and start watching videos together.

While you’re watching a clip on YouTube, your profile picture moves along a progress bar, together with profile images of your friends who are also watching the same video. You all have the option of adding reaction emoji or writing comments, which makes the experience a lot more enjoyable for everyone.

The idea behind the app does sound quite interesting, as it allows you to share and watch videos with friends without being in the same room together. Unfortunately, the app is currently only available for iOS devices, but we hope that it will come to Android soon as well. Google hasn’t issued a comment on this topic yet, but we do expect that it will bring Uptime to other platforms eventually if it turns out to be successful on iOS.