YouTube is now globally rolling out a clone of a TikTok-like short-form video app, ‘YouTube Shorts’. This service was initially launched in India last year, before expanding to around 26 nations including the US and the UK. YouTube Shorts, which is still in beta, will be available across more than 100 countries around the world where YouTube is available.
In a blog post, the video streaming giant said, “That’s why we’re excited to announce that we are building YouTube Shorts, a new short-form video experience right on YouTube for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones.”
Currently, the famous video streaming platform is playing catchup to TikTok as the short-form video platform of choice, but Google’s service is launching Shorts’ integration with the broader YouTube ecosystem as an important selling point, the report stated.
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YouTube Shorts was officially rolled out in September 2020, entailing 15-second videos — the same time limit as TikTok. The main benefit of YouTube Shorts over TikTok, for creators, is the capacity to tap into YouTube’s massive library of audio material to incorporate in their shorts.
Moreover, the app, which is available on both iOS and Android, enables creators to join multiple video clips together into one, speed regulator, and a timer and countdown to make capturing the right moment easier. New options that are coming incorporate automatically added captions, adding clips from the phone’s photo album to the Shorts camera, as well as the capacity to add filters and effects, with more coming in the future.
In addition to this, YouTube’s Shorts were receiving over 3.5 billion views in the early beta version, so there is no surprise the short videos are now getting to more and more users. Just for comparison, TikTok is spanning 1 billion monthly active users and is expected to become the first platform to reach the milestone in such a short time.
Source: The Verge
