Google just announced that it will now offer a new option for YouTube users who want to share their videos with a large group of viewers without having to make the video either private or fully public. Currently, there is a 25-person cap on YouTube’s private sharing option, which makes this feature unusable for anybody who wants to share a video with a larger class or club, for example. Now, YouTube users will be able to choose an option that is already a standard feature on many other content sharing sites: unlisted videos.
Unlike private videos, where users need to invite others so that they can see these videos (and to make things even more complicated, these users also need YouTube accounts), unlisted videos can be viewed by anybody who has access to the private link. These videos aren’t indexed in YouTube’s search engine and won’t appear on a user’s personal channel.
As Google notes in its announcement today, it’s worth noting that these videos can still be viewed by anyone with access to the link. If you are worried that your friends will share a video on Twitter, Facebook and their blogs, then using the ‘unlisted’ option is probably not a good idea.
