Over 2 billion active users per month, over a billion hours of video viewed every day and over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute: if there is anyone who can (try to) counter the overwhelming power of TikTok, which for its part has seen triple the number of members worldwide in one year, it’s definitely YouTube.
Google he knows this well, and so he has given his video upload platform the weapons to fight. Indeed, a weapon: it is called Shorts, was initially tested in the United States and India from autumn 2020, then in 24 other countries and in these days it is made available for all youtubers in over 100 countries around the world, Italy included. As the name implies, it is a section of the site (and app) dedicated specifically to short videos: featuring the hashtag #shorts, shot vertically and 60 seconds or less long. As on TikTok, in fact.
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How to watch a video on YouTube Shorts
Deciding to focus on clips of this type, especially for the format they have, was certainly not an easy choice for YouTube, as product manager Todd Sherman explained to us, who previously worked for Snapchat and Twitter: “This is a big change for us, because years ago the site was created to be viewed from the desktop (like a TV, ed), but we did it to give everyone the opportunity to express themselves “. And also because it was impossible not to notice the unstoppable success of TikTok, so great that everyone is trying to replicate it: from Instagram to Netflix, which has grouped in the Fast Laughs section some short clips of its funniest series to watch without having to see the entire episodes.
From the smartphone app (ideal for this type of content), the Shorts are accessible from their space on the homepage and also from an icon on the bottom; once you are inside, the resemblance to TikTok is striking: the videos are scrolled one above the other with a movement of the thumb and on the right there are exactly 4 icons (like, dislike, comment, share), which are not the same but almost. What YouTube has more is the fact that it is YouTube: from a Short you can access the youtuber’s channel and the rest of his videos (which can be short or long indifferently) and from the excerpt of the song used to accompany it you can go to the full version of the song, drawing on a practically infinite database. And it works in the opposite direction too: tapping the Create button (below) from a video you are watching you can create a Short with the same audio base.
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How to create a video for YouTube Shorts
In the new section you can upload any clip shot with your smartphone: it is enough that both vertically and last no more than 60 seconds. Above all, you can create it from the app, by clicking on the + button and selecting Shorts: from there you can record without pausing, or press and hold and then release several times to record more segments to be assembled together, even increasing or decreasing the playback speed only a few. Of course you can also: add music or text (even at specific points in the video), add automatic subtitles, sample and reuse audio from other Shorts and use a (for now small) selection of colored filters. Complete everything with title, description and hashtag and the video is ready for publication.
What we liked the most, in the tests we have done these days, it is above all the easiest (compared to TikTok) management of writings and where you want them to appear, and more flexibility in choice of audio which in some way acts as a soundtrack to the video: you select a song, but you are not forced to use the clip proposed by the app and you can instead decide the part you prefer. Again: an advantage YouTube has by being YouTube.
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Will YouTube be able to do what no one has done?
It is still unclear if Shorts will have its own app or will continue to exist only within the YouTube one (soon the versions for desktop, for the mobile browser and for tablets) but that’s not the point. The point is: YouTube will be able to do what no one has been able to do in the last couple of years, that is stem the dominance of TikTok in this niche, what much niche is it not?
As we said at the beginning, if there is anyone who can do it, it is Google’s video platform, with billions of videos and songs from which creators can eventually start to develop their ideas. And strong of the commercial agreements with over 250 labels and record companies around the world, including Universal, Sony, Warner and many more. More: one thing that is not on TikTok (or there is to a lesser extent) and instead on YouTube there are the many videos to use as a basis, revisiting the jokes of a comedian, the preparation of a recipe or a scene from a movie.
Responding to a question about the Chinese rival, Sherman admitted that “we wanted to understand what people want and why TikTok was successful“, adding however that” our strength (of Shorts, ed) is the connection to YouTube “, with its immense database of videos and music, and explaining that” you are on Shorts to be successful, because ours is a showcase huge. “To be successful and to earn money: in the last 3 years, the platform has paid over $ 30 billion to creators, artists and companies (here is the story of one of them, who grossed $ 225,000 in 2020).
As for the possibility of the two apps to coexist and perhaps the same content to be present on both, Sherman told us that “creators can use YouTube Studio to download their Shorts and republish them wherever they want” and also that “if TikTok wants to add an automatic sharing button on Shorts (already happening for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, ed), we will not stop them. “Which is already something.
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