YouTube unveils Shorts, its answer to TikTok videos
- YouTube has launched a beta version of Shorts, which can be used to create and share TikTok-like short video clips.
- This feature allows you to add music and adjust the video speed.
- It’s part of the YouTube app in India for now, with more countries in the coming months.
YouTube is one of the internet giants competing with TikTok. The company has released a beta for YouTube Shorts, a “short-form video experience” clearly intended to challenge the TikTok app by mimicking some of its key features.
The beta version of YouTube Shorts limits videos to 15 seconds versus 60 seconds for TikTok, but otherwise seems eerily familiar. You can add music from a “large library”, adjust the speed, string multiple clips together, and set a countdown or timer to perfect your footage.
It will be recognizable when you are a bystander too. Starting today, there’s a TikTok-like “Watch Experience” for short videos that lets you swipe vertically to browse them and makes watching shorts “even easier”.
The beta version of Shorts is currently only available for India in the YouTube app, but will also be available in other countries in the “coming months”. During this time you can also expect additional functions.
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Unsurprisingly, YouTube would jump into the fray. TikTok recently announced that there are around 50 million daily active users in the US alone and 100 million who use it at least once a month. In July there were nearly 700 million monthly active users worldwide. Shorts could help YouTube fend off TikTok and get you stuck with its apps.
The timing is also appropriate. With TikTok getting a lifeline from Oracle to potentially avert a U.S. ban, YouTube will join the short-form video crowd as its main competitor’s future is uncertain. Expect a flood of converts not necessarily, but it could hope to find users concerned that TikTok won’t last forever.
