YouTube Reportedly Developing ‘Shorts’ to Take on TikTok
It will be a short video platform within the YouTube app
The battle for providing the coolest video content to the audience is getting fiercer by the minute. YouTube is rolling up its sleeves to beat its key competitor, TikTok, by launching its own bite-sized video app called ‘Shorts’.
TikTok first gained the limelight when it merged with Musical.ly a few years back. It’s an entertainment-oriented app that lets users create videos and add music, and audio clips to it. With the app, a user can create weird, cringy and funny content. TikTok is a worry for YouTube because it has 800 million active users, and it was downloaded 728 million times in 2019. In total, it has been downloaded 1.5 billion times and is 7th most used social platform. It’s only behind Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, WeChat, FB Messenger and Instagram.
The “Shorts” will be accessible via the existing YouTube app. It will offer a loaded library of licensed music for users and will have features that will make the user experience better. For instance, it will have a feature that resembles Instagram’s stories.
Dylan Byers of MSNBC has confirmed the news regarding YouTube’s efforts to take on TikTok. He tweeted “This is potentially big…. And, bonus: YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki and I talked about TikTok in a podcast episode that will air later this month. We’ve got an item coming soon confirming this news, along with a few of her comments on YouTube & short-form video >>> https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1245427985684946945.”
YouTube is working on a TikTok rival, slated to debut by the end of the year. Story with @jtoonkel: https://t.co/HQS14x4JPr
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) April 1, 2020
The “Shorts” by YouTube will be announced before the year ends and will probably steal the best bits from everywhere else to create something users probably will be addicted to.
YouTube efforts might prove fruitful as TikTok’s reliability and trustworthiness are being questioned by many, including government organizations and agencies. It is also believed that TikTok wants to attract the attention of older user base in the future so YouTube might lure the young ones.
What do you think of YouTube efforts to beat TikTok? Will “Shorts” succeed with so many creative minds and financial assets at its disposal or will users stay addicted to TikTok?
