Watch2Gether and TogetherTube

The original developer of TogetherTube has decided to discontinue development and operation of the site. We have agreed that Watch2Gether will take over operations in order to find and explore ways to provide a new home for the TogetherTube community on Watch2Gether.

TogetherTube will continue to operate as normal for the next few weeks. I would like to use this time to invite all interested TogetherTube users to join this conversation. Please checkout Watch2Gether and let me know what you think. Are there any features you are missing or do you have any other ideas for improvement?

Watch2Gether is a free service as well. You can simply create a room from the start page: https://www.watch2gether.com

In order to save temporary rooms or to post in this forum, you need to create a free account: https://www.watch2gether.com/auth/sign_up

Update 21/06/2019: TogetherTube will shut down at the end of June.

I’m looking forward to your input!

Are you going to release source code for this project?
We could take over development, or atleast host it on one of our servers for private use.

The other solutions like watch2gether are full of features we don’t want.

4 Likes

Please add a Simplistic mode to Watch2Gether that is clean and simple like TogetherTube is. The only thing making Watch2Gether feel worse than togethertube is all the clutter and extra GUI, basically anything that isnt the video and a collapsible chat.

5 Likes

Could you enable direct linking to rooms? Right now when I link directly to a room name it will load, then kick out to the homepage - example

Also, the ability to queue up and vote videos in a special playlist would be a great addition
Permissions too

1 Like

The one issue i find is the room freezes randomly and auto-refreshes and loses every video for people watching, and any videos that person had listed either is removed or placed at the bottom, It’s on Google Chrome/ Android phones among other browsers! I would love seeing this fixed in some way, rather at it’s base or a simple bandaid to keep the videos on regardless if the person leaves.

I agree. The Interface of Together Tube is super simple and easy to use. Please make Watch2gether also simple and removing all the extras.

1 Like

Together Tube (TT as me and my girl called it) was a lovely page and an important part of our days for the last few months. I guess nothing beautiful can last forever. Thank you so much guys for your amazing contributions and I hope you guys have a great life. Cheers
A sad fan

Hi everyone and thanks for your feedback so far! I’ll comment on some of your points bellow:

@sandros Release of the code is currently not planed.

@thepenguin1998 Direkt linking of rooms is no problem with Watch2Gether. The link that you posted is simply too short. Could it be that you cut off something at the end?

@dkittinz Is this a bug report for TogetherTube or for Watch2Gether?

@venkatram.viswanatha Thanks for you nice words. I hope you like Watch2Gether as well!

@bl00dshot131, @babbi.saggitarius, @frostwing74 Watch2Gether looks different than TogetherTube for sure and it uses more colors and might be less reduced. On the other side there are actually not so many more functional components like video, chat, search… It would be nice to know what you exactly don’t like - BTW: On Watch2Gether you can change the colors and the background image in the room settings and these changes are synced as well.

@frostwing74 Im not sure what you mean with the “random video”? A video is only played in the room when it’s selected by one of the room members.

Thanks everyone and keep the feedback coming!

There are some nice features in Watch2gether such as played history and playlist options. I tried out W2T today and really enjoyed the usage, and these added features which set it apart from Together Tube are great too.
But here are some new suggestion and features that should be retained from TogetherTube:

  • Notification of video pause / initiation of play in the chat section (sometimes the others in the room wonder if the website is glitching without this response on chat; the current response of temporary display of this notification on the video is not sufficient)
  • Notification of mm:ss in the chat section when you fast forward/rewind in a song
  • Option to skip a song
  • Maybe we should have an option to add Spotify songs and playlists
    Also, currently there are a lot of bugs in pausing/playing a song and fast forwards/rewinds

Thank you Florian for your active responses. Please do try to bring in the above changes.

2 Likes

Thanks for your input! Can you provide some more infos on your point “a lot of bugs in pausing/playing a song and fast forwards/rewinds”? The more details i have on these kind errors, the higher the chance to fix them. The best would be a step by step instruction on how to reproduce the issue.

I liked TogetherTube for the fact that we could escape the ads before the youtube began. That is not the case in Watch2Gether. We like the ad-lessness of TogetherTube and that is why it was somewhat successful. Now ads are everywhere in the room and people generally don’t want to be blitzed by ads on every click on the site. I think society in a whole is ready to move toward being less controlled by click bait and ads. Having them up on the site in the sidebars or below the youtube screen is fine, but once they start intercepting the very means of why we come here (to listen to music and watch videos), then it becomes a “chore” to visit this site. The site provides more than TogetherTube and there are some cool new features on this. I generally like this better than TogetherTube, but if we could eliminate the ads being played before the youtube begins, that would be absolutely amazing.

1 Like

When I try clicking the button to pause/play it just doesn’t work. Sometimes I try refreshing 2-3 times and it then works. Same with fast forward and rewind.

@joseph.heilman Thanks for your feedback! I understand that ads are annoying sometimes. They do, however, provide a feasible way to pay for the ongoing development and support. In this case we have to differentiate two things:

  • Ads that you see in the player are placed there by the content platforms (e.g. YouTube). I don’t have any control over these ads and I do not get any revenue share from them.

  • The two ad banners on the site itself are there to generate revenue for further development. If you don’t like them there is the option to upgrade your account to Watch2Gether+. This removes these banners for yourself and for everyone else in a room that you have created. See details here: https://www.watch2gether.com/pages/plus

@babbi.saggitarius Thanks for the details. This shouldn’t be the case of course. I ran some tests and from my side everything should be fine. Do you have issues with your internet connection sometimes? When you click on a button of the player the command it first sent to the room and then being relayed back to you. So when your internet connection lags you’ll notice a delay. Otherwise it would be interesting to know which browser you are using and where you are located.

I too would like Togethertube to remain simplistic and lacking bloat. My friend currently only has an old laptop and it overheats when using sites like Watch2gether and other alternative sites. Sure he may in the future get a better computer, but I’m sure we’re not the only one that appreciates a video sharing site that doesn’t tax their systems. If you are able to implement non-intrusive ads on the site without adding to the bloat, that is fine, we just would appreciate that Togethertube remains well optimized at the very least.

1 Like

My friends and I have been using togethertube for years. We used it so much the creator of the website would sometimes pop into our room and hang out with us. Its really sad to hear the website is going down.

Some things we prefered about togethertube:

  • The simplicity. As a few other people have mentioned, it would be nice to opt out of the nice custom options for a more simple layout.
  • One major difference is the voting system togethertube used. Once a member selected a video, that video would play no matter what. The only way the order could be changed is if a moderator skipped or rejected the song OR if the members voted for another song to play first. I really hate how on watch2gether a person can disrupt the video playing at anytime with a single click. I still would want members to play the videos they want to play.
  • On a similar note, I would like to be able to opt out of having to use a playlist and the videos go away after we play them.
  • Another feature I miss is the ability to see the length of the videos in the search.

This is an image basically explaining what me and my friends have agreed we all want from Watch2gether. Sorry if it seems a little crude but it shows that we believe the Users should be tucked under the chat, and the url should be under the video just like Togethertube. Forgive us if we seem a little bias to togethertubes setup but it really was the best and preferred over all the other options including Watch2gether, simply based off of how simple and elegantly the GUI was setup to be.

1 Like

Also the panel on the left is entirely unnecessary and only adds to the clutter of GUI that i was talking about earlier. If anything it should be an optional panel/button that only takes up screenspace if you click on it. Take after youtube where the “Add to playlist” Is tucked neatly under the video as a button and the screenspace is mostly reserved for the video itself.