Google's Uptime is all about snarky YouTube parties
"Uptime" from Google's Area 120 incubator is now on iOS.
Last year, Google created Area 120, an incubator where employees with (approved) ideas can spend their "20 percent time" on side projects. One of the groups has just released Uptime, an app that lets you meet friends, share YouTube videos and add stickers, "sparkles," hearts and snarky comments. You can search for video content within the app, which can also will help you find friends "based on common connections within Uptime," according to the FAQ. Ironically, it's only available on iOS and not Google's Android, at least for now.
The app is not unlike a feature called "Video Party" that we first saw on Microsoft's now-defunct So.cl. Like that app, Uptime lets you watch YouTube videos together with others and make comments, but not to record or stream your own videos. It's also a way to get daily video recommendations from friends so that you won't miss the cat or kid video du jour. Other apps like Sean Parker's Airtime give you similar YouTube party features but also let you chat over video.
It would make a lot of sense for Google to integrate the app into YouTube, rather than having it work as a standalone product. If it is planning to do that, running it in a limited way on iOS only would let the Area 120 group develop the features in a controlled way. If you have an iPhone and want to try it out, you can now grab it here.
