YouTube takes on TikTok with Shorts
September 15, 2020
By Nik Roseveare
YouTube has unveiled YouTube Shorts – a new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot and share short videos on their mobile phones.
Shorts will begin rolling out in India – a market where short-form video sharing app TikTok is already hugely popular – this week.
In a statement, YouTube explained: “Over the next few days in India, we’re launching an early beta of Shorts with a handful of new creation tools to test this out. This is an early version of the product, but we’re releasing it now to bring you — our global community of users, creators and artists — on our journey with us as we build and improve Shorts. We’ll continue to add more features and expand to more countries in the coming months as we learn from you and listen to your feedback.”
Shorts will allow users to express themselves in videos that are 15 seconds or less. YouTube is encouraging any mobile creator or artist to start uploading their existing short videos on YouTube immediately to “start getting discovered”.