YouTube Integrates with Twitter

As rumors surface that officials in charge of Twitter may finally be getting serious about charging money for their service, an online tech magazine is reporting today that Google Inc.’s popular video-sharing site YouTube is getting some integration with the increasingly popular micro-blogging platform.

 

According to this story by Daniel Ionescu of PCWorld.com – part of PC World Communications, Inc., a subsidiary of the International Data Group – YouTube (News - Alert) viewers now can post a video they like on Twitter.

 

“The share links on YouTube now offer a Twitter posting option along Facebook and MySpace (News - Alert),” Ionescu reports. “Users can expand the box for more sharing options, but those three are the ones YouTube promotes.”

 

Specifically, when a users clicks on the Twitter button, a pop-up window will open his or her Twitter account and fill in automatically with text asking followers to “check this video out,” with the video’s title and URL following, Ionescu said.

 

It’s been a big week for Twitter.

 

As TMCnet reported today, on the heels of an announcement that Salesforce.com would offer a CRM application for Twitter, rumors emerged that the officials at micro-blogging tool are eyeing ways to get money out of their free service.

 

According to the AFP, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company has “patient investors” and time to experiment with revenue generation.

 

“That being said, we’ll start experimenting this year,” Stone reportedly told the venerable Paris-based news service. “We don’t have to hit a home run right away but we’re looking forward to showing some progress in this area.”

 

That seems to jibe with what the company says on its Web site about making money: “Twitter has many appealing opportunities for generating revenue but we are holding off on implementation for now because we don’t want to distract ourselves from the more important work at hand which is to create a compelling service and great user experience for millions of people around the world. While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.”

 

The tech media began to focus on Twitter’s money-making possibilities when Stone this week said during a radio interview that the company could start charging fees for commercial accounts used by businesses to spread messages.

 

Stone then confirmed to the Silicon Valley Insider blog that Twitter does plan to offer “commercial features” for a fee in the future.

 

That makes sense.

 

Social networking sites long have puzzled over how to monetize their services – services that seem to spread like viruses (think of Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter alone) among casual Web users and now, especially with integration into mobile devices and applications, business users.

 

And there’s steep competition within the social networking world for users.

 

In fact, Facebook earlier this month – eyeing Twitter’s real-time functionality – launched a redesign of its homepage that makes it easier and faster for “friends” to find out what their online mates are doing.