YouTube Has Taken a Sly Shortcut to Compete With TikTok 

All over the world, content creation platforms can’t get enough of TikTok’s shorts video style, and now YouTube is inarguably competing with the social media blockbuster by incorporating a new TikTok-style creator tool.

YouTube has added a new feature to its iOS and Android apps that allows users to instantly generate up to 60 seconds of previously uploaded lengthy videos into Shorts.

YouTube further explained that if the selected video is less than 1 minute, creators can either shoot another video using the Shorts video recorder or upload more video from their gallery, and the tool utilizes the platform’s existing editing suite.

Only the content creators themselves can import and alter their existing content library, and any Shorts created using existing videos will, definitely, be linked to the original upload on YouTube.

On the exterior, the feature appears to be a creator-led advancement, one that provides long-form content creators with a new way to attract new subscribers (eg. if a user is interested in a “shorts” version of a lengthy video, they may be persuaded to click “continue watching”).

However, this update also reveals YouTube’s desperate desire to expand its shorts library in order to successfully compete with TikTok and Instagram.

After receiving criticism for its recent decision to convert some vertical videos into shorter formats, YouTube is now betting that allowing users to choose whether or not their videos are automatically converted will be more effective.

In the coming months, YouTube users can expect a lot more vertical video content as a result of the organic growth of Shorts.

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