Well, you can’t say it was unpredictable or somewhat surprising. In August, Google began allowing YouTube partners to connect their account with Google+ and since then the writing was on the wall. Yup, now everybody can use YouTube with their personal Google+ identity (and Pages coming soon too).

YouTube has posted that all of the video site’s users can now switch their previous channel name to their Google+ account. This supposed to endow people the possibility to consolidate their various social identities into one, centered around the company’s social network Google+.

To connect your Google+ identity to YouTube, you first need to have a Google+ profile under the same account as your YouTube channel. Then, visit your channel’s advanced settings and choose “Begin using my full name on YouTube” to finish the process. Afterward, your YouTube channel will appear as your Google+ profile.

However, if your channel is deeply rooted as a brand or you wish to build it as such, it is not recommendable to wield the channel as your personal Google+ profile. Over the next upcoming weeks Google will also grant the option to link Google+ pages to YouTube channels in a similar way. Until then, stay patient!

If you run a channel with a name like BlueXephos or VlogBrothers, you should create a Google+ page (as opposed to a profile) with that name.

Google also states that whenever the possibility of integrating the Google+ page to a YouTube channel will become available, the page management functionality which allows up to 50 users to manage the Google+ page to handle the overload, will apply on the channel as well.

If you are a YouTube user you should consider whether if you wish building your channel around your personal Google+ profile (suitable for artists, athletes, musicians, etc.), build you channel around your Google+ brand page (suitable for businesses, organizations) or plainly remain with your current unconnected account name.

To understand what are the main benefits of linking Google+ to YouTube, you can visit Philip DeFranco channel and see how he’s engaging with his over 1.1 million followers on Google+. As DeFranco shows, linking the two social services together can certainly assist reaching to much more audiences.