Of course everyone wants to be the new Tiktok. The past couple of years has seen the rise of this micro-video social network in both usage and importance in culture. All of the major social media platforms and brands have come up with their own version or built-in features that mimic what has made TikTok so popular. Google launched YouTube Shorts last year in India (which banned TikTok as well) and then later on in the US and UK. Now it’s finally launching globally “across more than 100 countries” where YouTube is also available.
Even though YouTube Shorts is probably a little late as compared to TikTok, it relied on the powerful and popular YouTube platform and the Google marketing ecosystem and is now pretty popular among content creators. If they’re already on YouTube anyway, might as well create short-form videos to promote themselves, their channel and their longer content. As for users, it’s pretty easy to just swipe through the content, similar to TikTok and Instagram Stories.
YouTube Shorts has some pretty easy tools for creators like a multi-segment camera that lets you put together multiple clips, something TikTok users are most likely familiar with. The feature also has video speed controls and other tools to enhance the short-form video they’re shooting or uploading. There’s also the option to include music from YouTube’s library and even sampling audio from YouTube videos. Their extensive licensed library is something that they probably have an advantage over their competitors.
Now that YouTube Shorts is expanding globally, we can expect that they will be adding more features and tools to entice even more creators to join and post their short-form videos. This includes adding text to videos and automatic captioning. Viewership is probably not that much of a problem. Its built-in player has already surpassed 6.5 billion daily views globally even in just the 23 countries where it was previously available.
YouTube says they are “gradually expanding” the creation tools globally so you might just have to wait for it to get to you. You can update your YouTube app and maybe it will show up there already.
