It’s been two months since TikTok has been banned in India. Since then, similar versions of the video-sharing platform has been introduced by other social medias. Instagram came up with Reels and now, YouTube has introduced YouTube Shorts.
India is the first country to gain access to YouTube Shorts and the plan is to bring the feature to more markets some time in future. YouTube has not mentioned a timeline for when that would happen.
Similar to TikTok, Shorts will let users make 15-second videos which can be set to music. Music is available via an “in-product music picker feature,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Verge. The music picker “currently has 100,000s of tracks, and we’re working with music artists, labels and publishers to make more of their content available to continue expanding our catalog.”
The videos will appear on the homepage in a row dedicated to Shorts, the company announced. It is going to try to get as many people as possible to use the new feature. The feature is combined into the main YouTube app for Indian users, where it will appear with a prominent “create” button.
People who don’t have access to the Shorts camera can still upload vertical videos that are under 60 seconds long, along with the hashtag #shorts in the title or description, and these would still be highlighted on the YouTube homepage.