YouTube appears to be working on a separate social app named Tamba. The evidence so far is code inside its Android app, and YouTube has not said a word about it.
If the code is any guide, Tamba would work like Instagram more than like YouTube. The notification names read like a social network’s: new followers, follow requests and their approval, texts and group-chat invitations, hearts on posts. A reply to a comment can reportedly be spoken, or be a Short. A request-to-follow system would mean private accounts, which YouTube lacks today.
The find belongs to Android Authority, whose writers were looking through the YouTube app update numbered 21.44.534. There they saw a package called com.google.android.youtube.sandbox that the main app handles as a program in its own right. The word “sandbox”, plus an “experimental” tag on the icons, hints at a testing ground for a limited group, and the code itself calls the project “Project Sandbox”.
The look is deliberately different from YouTube’s. The teardown recovered a wobbly scribble logo with a play button cut out of it, next to the word Tamba, and 38 hand-drawn icons covering home, search, create, camera, inbox and chat.
Separate Android and iOS identifiers sit in the code as well, so an iPhone version is apparently planned.
Part of it may end up in YouTube itself. YouTube has been rolling out direct messages in its main app and has promised group chats within months, so Tamba might simply be the proving ground. The name may only be a placeholder, since it appears in the code only on the logo.
Nothing in the code gives a date, a test country or any sign that a separate download will ever appear.
