Some Synctubes alternatives for watching YouTube videos together

Synctube was a popular service that enabled you to watch YouTube videos together with friends. That's a great way of sharing a find with friends, or watching a video of your favorite broadcaster together with your friends for the first time. The service closed down on March 15, 2013 and I though it would be nice if I'd post about a couple of alternatives that are still available on the Internet.

Together Tube is one of those services. You first need to create a room by pasting a YouTube video url into the form on the Together Tube page. The room opens up once you select a user name for yourself. What you need to do now is to communicate with your friends, for instance via Skype, Teamspeak, Facebook Chat or other messaging services to let them know about the room url.

The room displays the video, basic controls underneath it, a chat area, a list of users who are currently in the room, and options to vote for upcoming videos.

A click on the play button starts the video for all users who are currently in the room. All users have the same rights, which means that anyone can click play or pause to start or stop the video.

The propose a video option is a search that anyone can use to find and add new videos to the queue. Videos can be voted on and the viewing order is based on that as well. So, more popular videos with more votes get played earlier than videos that are not nearly as popular.

You can create a room on the fly while on YouTube by simply replacing the "you" part of the web address with "together".

Watch Together is another service that lets you view YouTube videos together with friends at the same time. Just enter a name on the start page of the service to create a custom room for your and your friends. The link needs to be shared with your friends so that they can join it.

The page features a chat, options to enter a YouTube video url directly to watch it, options to add videos to a playlist, and a list of related videos and comments.

Watch2Together offers a couple of advantages in comparison to TogetherTube. It lets you paste in YouTube video links directly, displays more than three search results, and also displays related videos and comments.

Both services let you watch videos with as many friends as you want. The chat itself is great for silent communication, but I personally prefer to use voice communication when I'm watching videos together with friends.

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