Youkebox Makes YouTube Social
Ville Vesterinen
A Finnish music enthusiastic Lauri Soini who has been very active in the Finnish DJ scene has come up with a fantastic service, Youkebox, that make listening YouTube a social experience.
Youkebox is ensentially a YouTube window with a queue that people can list a song they wish to be played next. On the left hand you have a dynamic messaging board where you can discuss anything regarding the song that is being played or anything related to that. The beaty is that you will be able to create rooms for you and your friends where you can play the music you like …or would you will be as soon as the Beta development reaches that point. This makes listening a social experience despite people are watching the YouTube video in different locations. Similarly you can join rooms that play music you’re interested in and chat with strangers.
You can also skip the song that the community (the room) is playing, and as Lauri pointed out, people will not look it very favourably if you go and press the skip-button without consulting others in the room. I did it once and found out this very quickly. The conversation went something like this:
Me: [Pressed 'Skip']
Other listener: Why did you skip the song?
Me: I did not like the song that was playing
Other listener: Dickhead!
Other listener: There’s Mute-botton right next to the player for that
Me: Ups. So there is. Sorry!
The service is in closed Beta at the moment and you can’t create your own rooms just yet, but all that should be in place soon I hope. I liked the service from the get-go even without being able create my own room yet and will expect it to spread like wild fire among music fans when it will be opened to public.
We have 5 invitations to the first 5 who tell us in the comments why they should have them …and watch out for that Skip-button.
RSS-feed
December 7th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
1. It’s about music
2. It’s social
3. It’s Finnish
It would also be cool if you added Google Friend Connect on your site :)
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/
Kiitokset!
December 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Paula,
We’re planning on looking into that as soon as we find the time. We’re also following closely what Facebook is cooking: Good example of things to come http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/03/techcrunch-is-now-in-a-relationship-with-facebook-connect/
All in all, you have a solid point and we should act on it. Thanks again. Invitation is on its way =)
December 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
this sounds the next thing after spotify for parties (well it will be once they create the abiltiy to create rooms!)
everyone can add something to the queue, this helps to keep people in the physical room, rather than the “back-channel”.
Couple of free ideas (if they are not already in the list):
- if no-one is queuing anything up select something from the related list (should be a random number rather than just the top link)
- hook up to last.fm