You can now sign up for a YouTube account using your Google+ profile

If you’re one of the very few people who don’t have an actual YouTube account, the video sharing service has announced that you can now do so using your Google+ account.

This is pretty cool if you’ve never signed up for YouTube to upload videos or comment on ones from other people, but unfortunately you can’t tie your accounts together if you already have one just yet.

Here’s what the YouTube team had to say about the change:

…today we’re adding a feature that lets you sign up for a new YouTube channel using your existing Google+ profile. You can now use your Google+ profile name and photo on a new YouTube channel, giving you one consistent identity across platforms when uploading videos, sharing, commenting and other public activities.

Notice that the team mentions “New YouTube channel”, which just means an account.

This is yet another step to integrate all of Google’s services by using Google+ as the social layer. Relying on Google+ accounts as a consistent identity makes complete sense, but it definitely changes the way people will use YouTube. Up until now, people have chosen random usernames which is part of the charm of YouTube and also a part of the problems the service faces with bots and spamming.

While YouTube isn’t changing the option to have a regular username for new YouTube users, it is making the Google+ profile integration the default if you’re already logged into the service.

Here’s what the new signup will look like once it starts rolling out:

As I mentioned above, YouTube has promised that the ability to link your accounts is coming, but I’m not sure if that’s something I’d really want to do. I started using YouTube long before I used any other social service from Google and it feels odd to mix the two. But at the end of the day, YouTube is owned by Google and they bought it for a reason.

This move shows Google’s determination on adding its social layer to everything it produces and even YouTube can’t dodge it. It’s going to be weird seeing people’s real name and profile picture in the comment sections of videos during flamewars.