YouTube today announced the launch of a beta version of YouTube Short in Hungary; The new short-format video service of the video platform to compete with TikTok.
Short films are nothing new, they were launched in September 2020, and if we also follow foreign videographers, we have already seen minute-long videos created on the YouTube mobile app. So far, these videos can only be viewed from Hungary, but they cannot be made and uploaded.
However, on Wednesday, July 14, content creation tools will be available to anyone from home, so Hungarian language content may also appear among short videos dedicated to the TikTok competitor. With an expansion covering a hundred countries, YouTube has expanded to 126 countries where short films are available.
Besides the number of countries, shorts content creation tools have also expanded. In addition to the multi-pane camera, speed control settings, and music video recording, users can add text to short videos, and upload and crop pre-recorded snapshots from the phone gallery. In addition, new default filters have appeared, and the shorts have also received automatic captions that have already appeared in the videos. In addition, YouTube has high hopes for its existing catalog and licensed music. Not only audio from other videos uploaded as short content that can be uploaded to shorts, but audio from the entire YouTube catalog. The company said that content producers will have the option to allow others to use their videos.
In addition, 250 music publishers – including Universal, Sony, Warner or Believe – have been contracted by the video giant to make their music legally used by short film creators.
The question might rightly be asked, why would this tempt anyone from TikTok, as they are all available in almost the same form?
YouTube doesn’t want to lure anyone with shorts, the platform will be integrated into the YouTube mobile app, forcing existing viewers to consume shorter content instead of or in addition to the usual videos of around 10 minutes in length. In the same way, the YouTube app will keep those who watch short videos and find something in them. For example, for a song used in short films, you can automatically view the associated clip and the artist’s YouTube page with a single touch.
Right now, the Shorts UI is like a simple TikTok clone: you scroll vertically between videos that the algorithm places infinitely in front of the viewer. This summarizes what you’ll come up with next, based on the content you’ve watched on YouTube, hashtags, and short videos that viewers liked previously, like is yours Interface running on TikTok.
However, what Short now lacks is that the user only sees videos from the content producers they follow, and there is no other way for us to choose what we want to watch instead of by the algorithm. However, YouTube says the short videos have already reached 6.5 billion views per day.
YouTube is also monetizing the shorts front, and at the moment, the company is “looking at different ways” to do so. A $100 million YouTube Creators Fund has been announced, which will be distributed over 2021-22.
We’ve looked at YouTube on how to protect creators’ stuff, like how to prevent others from uploading content from TikTok to someone who has shorted it themselves, and will add an answer to the article.
