After Facebook, it’s Youtube that has been closely monitoring the exceptional growth of TikTok. And, the new feature of YouTube is a testimony to the fact.
In the technology world, whenever a small player debut with promising new ideas and features, becomes a threat to their closest competitors the dominant players often outrightly replicate or let’s just say ‘borrow’ inspiration from them. Such is the case with YouTube as of now which plans to overthrow TikTok with its brand new feature.
It has recently been reported that the Google-owned silicon valley YouTube is planning to launch an in-app feature which is meant to be in direct competition with TikTok. The feature is being called ‘Shorts’ and it is all set to launch before the end of 2020.
This new YouTube Shorts feature will enable users to upload micro-videos into a news feed inside its mobile app. It has also been reported that licensed music which the video sharing platform already has in its catalogue will be made available to the users who will be trying out this feature.
If speculations have got any credibility, the access of the new YouTube feature will be initially given to YouTubers with a certain number of subscribers only. However, Youtube still hasn’t responded back to these claims.
Will Youtube Shorts Crush TikTok?
If we pay attention to the history of Youtube, you’d find out that the video-sharing platform constantly tries to compete with other popular tech platforms to maintain its dominance. However, it often ends up failing to drive new audiences away from their competitors. For example, Youtube copied Instagram’s ‘Story’ feature but it didn’t really take off and failed to replicate the success of it. Another instance is Youtube launching its premium platform ‘Youtube Red’ as a response to the meteoric rise of video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix and Hulu but that too didn’t massively pay off for them as well. To put things in perspective Netflix has 167 million paid streaming subscribers while the Premium version of YouTube has only 20 million customers – just 1% of its total user base.
When it comes to competing with TikTok, Youtube may just have a fighting chance to do so. The user base of Youtube is huge as it has over 2 billion people using their app every month right now. Compared to that Tiktok’s current boasts only an estimated 800 million monthly active users.
Besides, YouTube already having extensive music licensing arrangements in place is another advantage that gives them a significant edge over TikTok. It will also widen the creative capabilities for the clips that will utilise the ‘Shorts’ feature.
The long list of YouTube Creators and Influencers is another element YouTube will definitely like to bank upon. It should be noted that content creators who have worked very hard to build up their subscriber count and influence on the Youtube platform during the pre-TikTok era, will now no longer have to start from the scratch by doing the same for Tiktok. Instead, the content creators can stick to Youtube only wherein they can avail a TikTok-like feature using ‘Shorts’ which will also save them the trouble of redirecting their followers to a different platform just for engagement’s sake.
Now the only question that remains is whether ‘Shorts’ will succeed in a way that YouTube’s other attempts to replicate their competition have not. We will keep you posted.
