YouTube Shorts, the company’s shortened response to TikTok, is being launched in beta in the United States starting today. The short video format has been available for several months in India, but today marks its debut in the United States (along with the addition of several new features).
For the beta launch, YouTube Shorts will present all the basics of any TikTok clone: a multi-segment camera that makes it easy for creators to quickly assemble clips, a wide selection of music tracks (with catalogs from “more than 250 record labels and publishers) ”), And a robust-looking subtitling tool, the last of which debuts with the release in the United States. “We really want to create a creative playground here, where we give creators the raw material to produce great videos,” says Todd Sherman, YouTube product leader for Shorts.
Like TikTok, users will be able to go through an infinite feed of short videos generated by algorithms, subscribe to their favorite creators, explore hashtags or specific sounds and remix audio tracks from other videos. Even the interface is similar to the TikTok player.
But instead of having its own app, Shorts will live on a new merry-go-round on the YouTube mobile app’s home tab. (The company is also testing a dedicated Shorts guide.)
And while Shorts looks at many of the basics, there are a lot of features that make TikTok a unique viral success. There are virtually no collaborative features available on Shorts at launch – so users will not be able to respond to other videos or join in a version of the popular duet or sewing features of TikTok. There is also a lack of a way to see a more selected feed. For now, Shorts offers only its main algorithmic feed (similar to TikTok’s “For You” page), with no option to view only videos from accounts you have subscribed to.
Sherman says the company sees Shorts as a new way for the next generation of content creators to emerge. YouTube itself is filled with a hypercompetitive scenario of established creators who specialize in making videos that typically last 10 minutes or more. Shorts offer creators a chance to break that mold, much like what YouTube originally offered to creators on the Internet when it launched in 2005.
“I think the true essence of Shorts is to allow the next generation of creators who may have even found it very difficult, previously, to even consider creating on YouTube,” explains Sherman. “And if we can help fulfill our mission of giving them a voice, I think it would make us feel that we are continuing to develop YouTube in a way that keeps it relevant to the next generation of content creators on this platform. ”
This is not to say that Shorts will not offer anything to existing designers. To start, YouTube will share subscriptions on traditional and short channels. Therefore, all users who find your content in Short Films and subscribe to get more from it will also subscribe to any long format video, and creators with tons of subscribers will already have an integrated audience to which they can deliver Short Films. In at least one Short Film implementation that the company is testing, Short Film videos will appear directly on users’ subscription guides.
According to Sherman, YouTube has some great plans to connect Shorts to the broader YouTube ecosystem in the future – features that can help the novice service stand out in a crowded field that is already dominated by TikTok and other (less established) competitors. like Instagram Reels or Snapchat Spotlight.
And these features will be essential: YouTube is arriving too late for a party that is already ruled by TikTok and, as Reels and Spotlight showed, it is not an easy task not only to replicate, but to overcome TikTok’s seemingly magical mixture of algorithmic alchemy and viral trends. Unfortunately, YouTube Shorts is already trying to update itself, and its exclusive YouTube features are still very incomplete.
The shorts have some smart links to traditional YouTube videos: at launch, creators will be able to jump straight into creating a short from music videos for licensed music, for example. And in the future, the company plans to allow users to remix the sound of any YouTube video for use in Shorts, a potential gold mine of content for creators to remix in new memes and videos. (YouTube users can cancel, if they prefer that their audios are not used.)
But Shorts still barely scratch the surface. For example, Shorts that use a music clip can create a link to the video clip on YouTube, but there is no easy collection or link to find Shorts for a song in the normal video player, for example.
While starting from the back, YouTube is an unparalleled force for online videos, and the fact that creators can seamlessly transition between short and long videos – while bringing their audience with them – is not to be dismissed.
“As we grow Shorts, we can connect this ecosystem to the broader YouTube. And that means that if you are a short-form creator and grow to become a long-form creator, that audience can grow with you, ”says Sherman.
Being able to link directly to the original sources of audio content – be it a song, a movie clip or an excerpt from an interview – is also a powerful advantage for YouTube, as is the size of the site.
As Sherman explains, “One of the fundamentals that has helped so many people become creators is that if you give them high quality inputs, they are more likely to get high quality output by remixing other things.” And if you’re looking for videos to insert, it’s hard to find a bigger source than YouTube.
But there are still big unanswered questions that YouTube needs to find out about Shorts – the main one, how content creators will make money. “I think the world expects YouTube to support creators. And I think that will also extend to Shorts, ”says Sherman. “The way we think about it is: television has a different business model from movies, YouTube has a different business model from television, and the short video will have a different business model than long YouTube.”
For now, however, YouTube is not making announcements about what monetization options will look like in shorts.
Another big question is what – if anything – YouTube is planning to do to ensure that Shorts don’t end up as another place for content creators looking for influence to just go over popular TikToks and reap the rewards (something that Instagram Reels continues to fight with.) Sherman says it’s something that the Shorts team is investigating, but that they have a fine line ahead: YouTube doesn’t want to discourage creators from posting their content on multiple platforms, but it also doesn’t want people to just reposting videos of other people who just downloaded from TikTok too.
The company says it will take a little while for Shorts to be released, but that it should “be available to everyone in the United States in the coming weeks”.