YouTube aims for greater social media integration

Video-sharing website YouTube, owned by Google, aims to spruce up its social networking skills through better integration across platforms, and hopes to more than double annual ad revenue in emerging markets like India, a top executive said.

"YouTube has been lacking great social features. Commenting and sharing have been part of YouTube, but the experiences could be much better than they are," Tom Pickett, global content head for the website, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday during a visit to India.

YouTube says it gets around 800 million unique users every month. India is the second-biggest source of content for YouTube, after the United States.

Pickett said YouTube was working on areas such as the comments section of the site, which doesn't allow users to log in from other social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.

"As we think of incorporating Google Plus type functionality we think we can get a better dialogue going and a social platform that's not just YouTube but it's actually a common piece that cuts across all Google products," Pickett said.

Google launched its Google Plus social networking site last year as a competitor to dominant player Facebook, which is readying an initial public offering.

While Pickett said YouTube aims to more than double its ad revenue in emerging markets, he declined to give specifics.

Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012