After a short trial period, the short video function of YouTube – Shorts has become available to all American users. This news was announced on the official Twitter of YouTube, TeamYouTube.
It’s official: the Shorts camera is now available to everyone in the U.S. 🙌
And with it, a bunch of updates:
⏱ 60 sec recording (vs. only 15)
🤳 filters (to change the color/vibe)
💬 captions (auto-generated or manual)All the deets → https://t.co/wKwpBTtyOy
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) May 5, 2021
With the increasing popularity of the short video app TikTok among the youth around the world, YouTube finally takes on the challenge more seriously. As a dominating video platform, YouTube has always been unenthusiastic with the idea of “social plus video”. The slow reaction of YouTube allowed the emerging video apps like TikTok to take a cut off the market.
In fact, the Shorts function, which is also named Shorts Camera, has been open to some selected users since the August of last year. This reflects the new trend of product testing for the major Internet companies: starting the trial in the secondary markets and then launching in the main western markets such as the U.S. and Canada.
In a short tweet, Team YouTube summarized the highlights of the Shorts function:
- 60 seconds recording
- Video filters
- Captions
In addition to the short tweet, YouTube also gives more detailed information about it, which includes:
- Create Shorts with audio from YouTube
- Notifications to subscribers
- Direct Shorts tab/icon on the toolbar
YouTube’s exception of putting the Shorts tab in second place on the toolbar, right beside the Home tab shows YouTube’s high expectation of the Shorts Camera function. Meanwhile, we can see this time YouTube may have really decided to consider the social function inclusion inside the video app.
Moreover, using the Shorts Camera function means the users will take video directly from the camera of cellphone, which also means lower video quality, more intuitive content creation, and rough post-production (or no post-production at all). To satisfy the need of professional and semi-professional video makers or to satisfy the creation and entertainment demand of average people, YouTube has no choice but to confront the dilemma.
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