YouTube has been working for months on a new feature called Shorts, which was born with the clear intention of becoming a great rival for TikTok, the great dominator when it comes to short music videos. In this way, the video platform seeks to become a competitor for the most popular platform of the moment.
youtube shorts lets create 15 second long videos from the smartphone, as does TikTok, a platform that last year managed to have more than 33 million downloads, a proof of its great popularity, which experienced great growth due to the confinement due to coronavirus. During the quarantine, many people decided to download it and make their musical creations to try to entertain themselves while they were isolated at home.
TikTok It has managed to differentiate itself from the rest of the social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook which, despite its attempts, have not managed to take the throne from it. In the case of YouTube, it will not be necessary to download any additional application to use this function, so short videos can be recorded from the YouTube application itself, where this functionality has been integrated.
However, it may be the case that you still do not have the function activated since it has progressively reached users, first of all for all those who have creator profile. In any case, we recommend that if you want to be aware of when you can use it, you always keep your smartphone app updated to the latest version, in addition to regularly checking if youtube shorts is now available on your mobile phone.
How YouTube Shorts work
The operation of youtube shorts It is very simple and has hardly any difficulties for the user, since it is similar to other applications such as the aforementioned and popular TikTok or any of the alternatives that you can find on the market today.
To be able to use this functionality, you just have to go to Shorts and the camera of your mobile device will open automatically, a button will appear on the screen, on which you will have to press to start recording.
This can be stopped whenever you want, so that you can create different shots until you reach the maximum allowed of 15 seconds of video, that is, they have a similar operation to Instagram Reels.
In short, in order to record YouTube Shorts you must follow these steps:
- First of all you must go to youtube shorts within the app to test the function.
- Next, your phone's camera will open, you will find the possibility of recording the content in two different ways. On the one hand you can tap the button to activate it and tap it again to finish O well press and hold the button and release it to end the recording.
- By doing so, you can record the 15 seconds consecutively, or make video segments until the 15 seconds of maximum duration that these videos have.
In the case of YouTube, unlike what happens on other platforms, yes it is possible to make videos of more than 15 seconds, but this cannot be part of Shorts. In addition, it has other limitations that you should know, such as, for example, that if you make content of more than 15 seconds from the YouTube app with Shorts, this video cannot be uploaded directly to YouTube.
If you want to upload a long video to YouTube, that is, longer than 15 seconds, you will have to record it from the gallery of your smartphone. On the other hand, users, in addition to being able to create short videos in the TikTok style, will also be able to enjoy different music licenses that are part of YouTube Music, so that you can use them as musical backgrounds for your videos.
The big difference with TikTok is that in this social network users can use their own or similar sounds but not licenses.
The short videos on social platforms are a trend over the last few years, being content that in many cases becomes viral very quickly, largely when it comes to being shared on other social networks. In fact, it is proven through different studies that users prefer short videos to other types of publications and formats, since it is possible to capture the message of the same in a matter of seconds and manage to attract more attention.
In addition, it offers a greater entertainment experience thanks to its different style. However, so far, despite the attempts of different platforms and companies, TikTok continues to lead in this type of content counting on more than 800 million active users per month.
Despite everything, Google is not willing to throw in the towel, and tries to use YouTube, the largest video platform in the world for years, to create short videos. However, it seems difficult for it to become a great rival for TikTok, especially after seeing the previous experience of other functionalities that the search engine company has tried to replicate.
Without going any further, the format has been available on YouTube for months. stories In the style of Snpachat, Instagram or Facebook, although its results are far from those that its main rivals have been able to achieve, and it does not enjoy, therefore, a great popularity.
That said, for the moment we just have to wait and see if youtube shorts reaches all users and, above all, how the platform works to provide it with content and characteristics that can be used as an element of differentiation with respect to what we can already find in the market, since this will be what it can determine if it finally manages to reap success or if, on the contrary, it ends up being a new platform signed by Google that fails as did other of its many projects created to face the successful platforms and services launched by other companies.