YouTube Shorts – Google’s attempt to TikTok?

Like Instagram did with Reels, YouTube is rolling out a new short-form video creator called YouTube Shorts that the company hopes will take some attention away from TikTok. A unique feature being tested in limited markets, and India is the first beta testers.

YouTube Shorts offers the following features to video creators:

• Create and upload videos of 15-seconds or less.
• Edit videos with several creative tools.
• Stitch shorter clips together with a multi-segment camera.
• Add music to videos from YouTube’s library.
• Speed up or slow down videos.
• Timers and countdowns.

Similar to TikTok, Shorts will let people make 15-second videos that can be set to music. Tag Music is available via an “in-product music picker feature,” a YouTube spokesperson told Tridence.

The selector “currently has 100,000s of tracks, and we’re working with music artists, labels, and publishers to make more of their content available to continue expanding our catalog.”

These videos are up to 15 seconds and can be seen on the YouTube homepage, called the new Shorts shelf, and across other parts of the YouTube app.

The company announced in an official blog post, and here are more details on what to expect from the official blog:

• Create: Creation is at the core of short-form video, and we want to make it easy and fun to create Shorts. We’re starting to test just a few new tools for creators and artists with our early beta in India: 
  • A multi-segment camera to string multiple video clips together,
  • The option to record with music from an extensive library of songs that will continue to grow,
  • Speed controls that give you the flexibility to be creative in your performance,
  • And a timer and countdown to easily record, hands-free.

• Get discovered: Every month, 2 billion viewers come to YouTube to laugh, learn, and connect. Creators have built entire businesses on YouTube, and we want to enable the next generation of mobile creators also to grow a community on YouTube with Shorts. 

• Watch: You may have recently seen a row on the YouTube homepage, especially for short videos. Starting today, we’re also introducing a new watch experience that lets you quickly swipe vertically from one video to the next, plus discover other similar short videos. We're also going to make it even easier to start watching Shorts.

In short, YouTube’s competitive advantage over both TikTok and Instagram boils down to one thing: numbers.

• YouTube has more monthly active users than both TikTok and Instagram combined at 2 billion. That’s a considerably greater audience of people who can discover content created with YouTube Shorts.

Currently, in Android, YouTube noted that Shorts would expand to iOS as more features will be added over time, and it’s confirmed that YouTube Shorts will expand to more countries in the coming months.