Since 2019, YouTube Shorts has been the in-house TikTok competitor for Google, and it’s now grown to 2 billion logged-in users tuning in per month, the company says. Now it’s getting a host of new features that make it even more of a direct rival to the Chinese short-form video giant.
The six new tools for Shorts creators announced today that make the Google-owned TikTok competitor more closely resemble TikTok include, most notably, “collabs,” which enable Shorts creators to make side-by-side video compilations. There are also stickers that fortify audience participation through formats such as Q&As and there are two tests: one in mobile-first vertical live video that incorporates this content into the regular Shorts feed, and another intended to ease the transformation of long-form YouTube content into Shorts.
