Shorts: YouTube launches TikTok competitor

Possibly smelling blood in the water due to the ongoing TikTok saga, YouTube has launched a competing service on the video platform with Shorts.

While TikTok is a popular app that brings a very specific experience to the social media landscape, a ban in India and a threatened ban in the US have resulted in other tech companies attempting to replicate the TikTok formula.

Facebook also recently launched its own TikTok-inspired feature called Instagram Reels.

Now Google has entered the fray with Shorts.

According to the announcement on the YouTube blog, “Shorts is a new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones.”

The feature is set to enter early beta in India first — where TikTok and several other Chinese apps were banned this year.

Shorts will include videos of 15 seconds or less. It will also allow you to string multiple clips together, use a variety of songs as background music from the Shorts library, and change speed controls to alter the video playback.

Shorts is still in its early days, with Google planning to flesh it out in the future.

The Shorts creation button will initially roll out to Android app for YouTube. Meanwhile, the feature will arrive on iOS “soon”.

Google says it will roll out YouTube Shorts to more countries in the next few months.

“There’s much more to come, and over the next few weeks and months, we’ll continue to roll out more creation tools and easier ways to watch short videos on YouTube as we listen to your feedback,” the company says.

Feature image: Google