YouTube has started rolling out its short video making tool “YouTube Shorts” to compete with the popular Chinese app, TikTok. Creation of the video making tool was announced a few months ago and now, the beta version is being rolled out in India.
“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.” YouTube announced in a blog post.
Shorts operates a bit like TikTok, and will allow users to create short 15 second long videos which can be set to music. YouTube will avail the music through an “in-product music picker feature” A YouTube spokesperson said that the music picker currently has hundreds of thousands of music and the company was working with music producers, singers and Record labels to add more tracks into their catalogue.
Read: YouTube Adds ‘Create’ Button, Makes More Changes For Easy Navigation
“As technology advances, creators and artists can now take advantage of the incredible power of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content wherever they are in the world. And people can be entertained and informed by bite-sized content in the spare minutes of the day.” YouTube explained in the post.
Shorts will be launched on YouTube’s homepage on a dedicated row, the company further said.
Last week, YouTube reorganized its controls on the Homepage making it easier for people to upload more content. As KahawaTungu reported, the “create” button has been made more prominent for users to navigate and upload content easily. This will make it easier for more people to try out “Shorts” and take advantage of the opportunities outlined by YouTube. The company says it has over 2 billion users on a monthly basis and says that “we want to enable the next generation of mobile creators to also grow a community on YouTube with Shorts.”
Read: Instagram Launches Reels, Its TikTok Version, In Over 50 Countries
Instagram launched a similar tool “Reels” in early August although reports indicate that the reception has been lukewarm. Most of the short videos on Reels are reportedly uploaded from TikTok meaning that there is little original Reels content on the app.
YouTube hopes to leverage its video making feature on the app to attract more users to Shorts. As YouTube is already a video making company with a video-viewing audience who appreciate short video entertainment, the company hopes that through Shorts they can bring an added experience to keep more people on the site longer.
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