Ever since its debutante unveiling at the social media prom, Google+ has had a bit of a rocky start and what have felt like a few stumbles. Google is attempting to bring the service into the mainstream and it must complete with already well established families like Facebook who do their job extremely well. As a result, the search giant today announced on the Google blog it’s seeking to pull greater integration of Google+ with YouTube and is soon-shipping two new Chrome plugins.

YouTube

As a community, YouTube is somewhat insular, most of its social functionality is tied up within itself and in order to break out, most people who record videos must push themselves into social media like StumbleUpon, Facebook, and the blogosphere—although much discovery happens in YouTube itself, it could benefit hugely from mainlining a social experience like Google+. So, Google has saught to add Google+ directly to YouTube by allowing people to share direct-from-videos to their Circles and also enabling users to see related videos from the interface.

A YouTube “slider” has been added to the stream, a YouTube icon that on mouse over will spawn a search asking, “What would you like to play?” and from there a user can receive a plethora of options and a jumping off point.

As well, sharing with Circles will function direct-to-Google+ but it will also enable friends to see related and suggested videos when they watch the video.

In a sort of way, Google is hoping to add to the already addictive quality of YouTube when watching memes like cute cat videos or every incarnation of the “dramatic meme.”

Chrome

Since Chrome is also a product of Google, they’d be remiss leaving it in the dark with Google+ and the search giant is now releasing two plugins for the web browser: a standard-fare +1 button and notifications.

The +1 button has been a long time in coming for many; having something in-browser to permit sharing directly from the surfing experience is something that I could use all the time. Needing to copy/paste a URL just to get it into Google+ has been a huge burden on my ability to share to my Circles. With the +1 button, it will not only grab the URL, but enable leaving a comment, and choosing which circles you want to share your thoughts with.

As for notifications, called the Hangout Plugin, that will certainly give Google+ a much more Twitter-like feel, although depending on how many Circles you’re running (and friends in them) you might get inundated quickly under an avalanche of notices. There appears to be no way to permit certain Circles to have pop-up notifications but ignore others yet—but should Google get along to updating their plugin that might be a good start.

For those who don’t have Chrome, Google has also released a new version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer that includes the +1 button and Google+ notifications.

Google states that they have a lot more planned on these products and truthfully it will be through integrating the entire social experience and increasing its availability. Facebook has successfully entangled itself with a multitude of different activities, it’s part of ordering food, part of advertisement, it allows you to bring your friends in on buying a car, watching videos, etc. Google+ could be part of all of this as well, but being the Johnny-come-lately means that its still growing out of its foothold.