This week YouTube is upgrading their service to allow its users (those with actual YouTube accounts) to install a new feature called “RealTime” that adds a toolbar to show you when your friends are online and what videos they’re watching. It’s a fairly basic, commonplace feature really, one that many other social networks already have (Facebook, ICQ, Xbox Live, etc.), but it’s one that YouTube has decided will not be available to everyone right away, instead they’ve chosen to give out the feature “by invitation only”.

Are you interested in being invited? I have 25 invites that I can hand out. Here’s what you’ll need to do.

First, find a fun video on YouTube and send me a link to it at krisabel@gmail.com along with your YouTube account name (mine, for example is Mindslinger). It can be any kind of video you wish. RealTime is about sharing the videos you like to watch and all I’m looking for is an example of you sharing a video with me. I’ll select twenty-five people and send them a friend request through YouTube. Once you confirm me as your friend, I’ll invite you to add RealTime to your YouTube experience and from there you’ll be given your own allotment of invites to use amongst your own friends (and feel free to remove me as your friend afterwards, if you so wish).

RealTime is made up of three elements:

- An icon that shows you how many people on your friends list are logged into YouTube

- An expandable menu where you can get details as to what video your friends are watching currently as well as a list of their past choices

- A notification icon that indicates whenever someone on your friend’s list has uploaded a video, posted a comment, etc.

These can all be customized in your accounts settings (which actions result in a notification, etc.) and finally, RealTime is a feature that you can turn on and off, giving you the option to browse YouTube in privacy.

It is a fairly simple application and there’s no surprise that it works as advertised. The real question I’ve explored is whether it serves a real purpose. Most people I know like to watch clips on YouTube, but very, very few have actually signed up for an account. Typically, it’s only those who have videos to upload that do. Right away that limits your pool of potential friends to use with this service. Most people today are quite happy to simply send each other links to clips than to use YouTube’s own network for sharing.The other issue is time. YouTube is a network of short videos and so the majority of its users tend to visit the site for small periods of time. You get in, watch a quick video about cats in boxes that someone sent you, and then you leave. I find that my friends aren’t logged into YouTube long enough to make it worthwhile to keep track of their presence. Additionally, videos that are embedded into websites and blogs, aren’t picked up by RealTime.

I’ve used a similar feature to RealTime on other networks where it makes more sense. Windows Live Messenger lets you view what music tracks your friends are listening to while their on their computer and that works because people tend to listen to music for long periods of time, all day in some cases. The same for the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live where people can spend hours playing video games and there’s the added bonus of getting your friends to join in, there’s an actual activity to share. Yes, RealTime is designed to allow to users to watch a video together in “real time”, but that’s not a need anyone has. YouTube’s popularity has stemmed from the idea that people can watch a video at any time, when it’s convenient.As it exists right now, RealTime is only for dedicated YouTube users, but that I think will quickly change. YouTube is quickly moving towards full-length content including major television shows and I have to admit that it would be worth having RealTime as a feature on traditional television. It would be interesting to see how many of my friends are watching Corner Gas or Canadian Idol.

As YouTube evolves to become more like a television service for the internet, offering up entire series of TV shows and full-length films, than we could see users engaged on the site for longer periods of time and then it might be worth sharing the experience with others at the same time. For now RealTime is merely a glimpse as to how YouTube is thinking about their future and that’s certainly interesting.