YouTube Celebrates 2 Billion Monthly Shorts User Milestone with New Tools for Creators
YouTube
YouTube revealed Shorts are being watched by over 2 billion logged-in users monthly, an increase from last year's 1.5 billion users. To celebrate the milestone, it announced new creator tools, some of which are available now and others to be released soon:
Collab: Creators can create Shorts in a side-by-side format with other long-form videos or Shorts. This allows creators to remix content and provide their unique take, response, or reaction to existing videos, fostering collaboration within the creator community.
Live Videos in the Shorts Feed: Creators can go live from mobile devices in vertical format, and a preview of their live stream will appear in the Shorts feed. Viewers can watch a live stream by clicking a "Watch Live" button on them. They can also scroll through a feed of other live videos. This helps creators, giving them more discovery opportunities, and has the potential to attract streamers from other platforms like TikTok and Twitch, where discoverability has been a challenge.
Recomposition Tools: Creators can easily turn their horizontal videos into Shorts using tools that enable them to adjust the layout, zoom, and crop video segments. This native tool saves creators time and effort, offering a convenient way to transform videos into snackable clips without the use of third-party apps.
Suggestions: When creators select "Use Sound" while remixing a Short, this feature bundles the audio and effect, including the same audio time stamp and effect from the Short they’re watching. This simplifies the process for creators to jump into trends, similar to Instagram's recently upgraded Templates.
Stickers: As part of new stickers and effects, creators will soon be able to use a Q&A sticker to ask their viewers questions, with responses displayed in the comments. Q&A features have been a popular component of short-form video, providing an easy way for audience engagement and interaction, and a feedback loop between creators and their fans.
Shorts Playlists: Users have the option to save Shorts to playlists, just like long-form videos and podcasts. This gives creators the ability to curate Shorts and easily reference them at a later point for viewing or remixing.
Since its official launch just over two years ago, Shorts has become a formidable competitor to TikTok. With these new tools, YouTube provides creators functionalities similar to TikTok, such as live stream discovery and Duets-like capabilities. YouTube isn't the only one providing strong competition to TikTok, though. Meta is also doing well, boasting 200 billion daily views on Reels across Facebook and Instagram.
Ultimately, the battle for short-form video supremacy may not matter to most people except for shareholders and those closely associated with the companies. However, this competition benefits us all, whether we are everyday users, creators, or marketers, as it offers greater choices in short-form video experiences. As the experiences become more similar in functionality and appearance, the culture and trends that exist (or don't exist) on them will be the differentiators.
