Youtube Shorts, the company’s TikTok-rival, is rolling out to all creators in USA over the next week, almost eight months after the company began testing the feature in India.
Youtube rolled out Shorts Beta in USA in March and claimed that Shorts was garnering over 6.5 billion daily views globally at the time.
The announcement confirming the launch of Shorts in USA for all creators came in a video newsletter of the Creator Insider channel.
Youtube Shorts camera will be getting the following four new features, alongside new creation tools.
- 60-second videos: Creators will be able to increase the duration of the video from the usual 15 to up to 60 seconds. However, the duration is capped at 15 seconds if the creator is using music from Youtube’s library.
- Filters: Filters are also coming to the recording and editing screen of the Shorts camera. More filters will be added over the coming year.
- Captions for more accessibility: Captions are also coming to Shorts, which will be automatically added to the videos, but creators will have the option to add captions manually.
- Shorts tab for the app: Youtube mobile users will also see a Shorts tab in the bottom row of the app as the Explore tab is shifted to the top-left.
Youtube Shorts launched in India in September 2020 following the ban on TikTok, which was a huge hit. Instagram Reels and apps from several Indian developers surfaced before Shorts made its way into the market. While Instagram Reels has had the bigger pie of the short-form video market in India, Youtube Shorts survived and did relatively well due to the half-billion strong Youtube userbase. In contrast, Youtube is competing directly with TikTok in the US market, which has spread like wildfire there, especially among younger users.
In the News: Facebook Neighborhoods rolls out in Canada and a few US cities
