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YouTube launches TikTok competitor, Shorts
- amelius 6y agoI'm surprised about the absence of disruptive startups in this space.
- totetsu 6y agoWasn't this space opened up by the death of vine?
- antoineMoPa 6y agoI think that the death of vine discouraged most attempts at making short social video apps.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoMusically (which became TikTok) launched shortly after Vine.
- sjg007 6y agoThere was lipdubs that were popular. I think that started the whole trend. Vine was certainly an initial iteration, it shows that you don't have to be first! I think the discovery algorithm or at least the discovery presentation is the most important part. Reels and SnapChat both have "shorts" but they don't deliver in the same way as TikTok.
- bigpumpkin 6y agoHigh hosting costs and difficult to monetize at first. Of course, the greatest barrier is making something that is massively popular.
- klmadfejno 6y agoDoes the example gif look like content people would want to see? I don't really know what TikTok is like but that looks like unremarkable strangers singing in an unremarkable context.
- m-p-3 6y agoProbably made as an example by someone that isn't used to create that kind of viral stuff.
- GrantZvolsky 6y agoTo me it signals that it's a platform for the everyday user rather than a small set of pixel-perfect influencers.
- klmadfejno 6y agoDoes that appeal to anyone? I got the impression TikTok was all about awesome sensational feeling stuff. This platform sounds like the opposite, which is a weird take I would think.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 6y agoI don't use TikTok, but I spent an evening last week sitting with someone who was using it. If they're usage is at all typical, then it was mostly "normal" people doing weird / funny things.
- newen 6y agoThe thing about TikTok is it’s a very different experience for different people due to its recommendation algorithm.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
- terlisimo 6y agoMy first thought at Google launching any new product/service is: "Heyy, another neat service that will live for 2-3 years before it gets axed."
- Tarq0n 6y agoConsidering their 'stories' feature has received no useability improvements or features since its introduction that's probably justified. TechAltar talks about using it for more than a year here: https://youtu.be/hePnMAL1eh4 https://youtu.be/hePnMAL1eh4
- blensor 6y agoOn the other hand, isn't this about the time it takes from now until the next big social thing gains traction and TikTok et al goes the way of the Dodo? So the usual Google service half-life would just work here.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoNo, because Google never invests in making its products compelling until after they get huge, so they cancel the products before they get compelling. Google+ put all its funding into cannibalizing other Google products against the will of those product builders and users, and none into making Google+ desirable.
- rishi_devan 6y ago"The company is hoping that considering people already come to YouTube for short video entertainment, Shorts will be another way to keep people on the site longer and get both existing and new creators to continue uploading." But the content creators with the most subscribers and the most views are the ones with longer, well produced videos. Not sure if people who come to the site to consume longer videos will appreciate 15-second short videos as well
- throwaway4good 6y agoThey will love the loop of an unskippable 15-second ad followed by a 15-second video.
- aronpye 6y agoWhy did Twitter end up killing Vine? Seems like a bad decision now since TikTok is pretty much a direct replacement. I thought Vine was quite popular back in the day.
- dominotw 6y agoMy group of friends used to use Vine all the time. Never used twitter. I was quite shocked when they killed it.
- mrkramer 6y agoI wonder how Twitter is even alive because the amount of mismanagement that happened in the last 10 years is staggering.
- jl6 6y agoWinner-takes-all-network-effect-first-mover-advantage.
- adventured 6y agoA spectacular example of how hard it can be to remove a networked product/service once it's entrenched. You can do a lot of things wrong if you reach that position, and still keep your place. People will reference MySpace as a counter to that. Except MySpace was never close to being entrenched, they had no moat or stake in the ground. They never had all the world's celebrities and politicians on their platform, using it as a core broadcast method to the world. At their peak in 2006-2007, MySpace's monthly active users measured in the tens of millions. Certainly very large for its time, however as a general purpose social network meant to pursue max scale, MySpace contrasted against Facebook demonstrates just how dramatically far away from entrenched-scale MySpace really was (they got maybe 10%-20% of the way there). To put it into perspective, Cristiano Ronaldo's following on Instagram is as big as MySpace at its peak. Now that's an entrenched max audience social network in action. MySpace was too early, before there were enough global users to even be able to obtain that level of necessary entrenchment protection. Their network - for its specific purpose - was small enough that it was still quite possible to unseat them. Facebook's boom phase also coincided perfectly with the rise of the modern app smartphone beginning in 2007-2008, which ultimately brought the Internet to a dramatically larger audience around the world (and was responsible for enabling Facebook to reach three billion users; without the smartphone that would either never happen or would have taken several more decades). I reference the type or purpose aspect because obviously not all social networks are max scale general purpose networks. Twitter's potential base isn't three billion users, as that many people will never want to use the platform under any circumstances. Each type of social network has a max potential userbase (Pinterest's max base is different from LinkedIn's which is different from Facebook's). Twitter has likely heavily (not entirely) saturated their maximum reach and long since gotten to the required entrenchment scale for what they particularly do.
- cblconfederate 6y agoDesigned in China, Manufactured in California oh the turntables
- mistermann 6y agoI have a feeling this is going to be an increasingly common theme.
- throwaway4good 6y agoAt the moment it seems like there is more competition and thus more new ideas coming out of China. Social media in the west seem to be dominated by a few giants that succesfully chokes any newcomers before they get started.
- cblconfederate 6y agoit s an old story. Most of the social games that became popular, most of the stuff that zynga did was copied from simpler social games that were popular in china/japan
- abc-xyz 6y agoI thought Vine was designed in California as well.
- ElectronShak 6y agoHow easy would it be to build such a tool, but directly using Youtube's API instead? A while back I tried to build an android app that uses youtube's RSS to follow only a few news channels. Issue on Android was that you cannot embed a Youtube player in a Custom View. The API is able to detect this by measuring the distance from the player container, to the edges of the screen.
- tanjtanjtanj 6y agoI made an app a few years back that aggregated content from /r/youtubehaiku (a subreddit devoted to short, typically comedic youtube videos) fairly trivially.
- beervirus 6y agoI predict this will be about as successful as Google+.
- actuator 6y agoGoogle+ had a network problem in my usage at least, and FB back in 2011 wasn't plagued with the problems it has today. Also a video broadcasting platform where video is not limited to your circle, wouldn't have the problem as long as they can get a sizeable mass which being YT they should be able to.
- panpanna 6y agoI predict they will try to shove it down our throats, for example by adding a dedicated button for inserting shorts in the keyboard app. Or adding it to your Google feed as a mandatory section, making people hate it even more.
- rchaud 6y agoInstagram is already doing this, pushing Reels on the Discover tab, and in your personal feed. While my Discover tab shows content closely linked to accounts I follow (music, comics, visual artists, sports), the Reels are scantily clad high schoolers dancing and lip syncing, which is what I imagine sells on TikTok.
- actuator 6y agoIf I understood it correctly, they are adding it in the main app itself. Would a separate app make more sense, as YT is where I mostly go for watching mid/long length videos usually and their consumption pattern would be way different. Also, would the recommendations work differently here, at present YT recommendations seem to have a very high recency bias. Short videos will have inherently different engagement metrics too, so hopefully recommendations for both work differently. But this is why I was very surprised with the rumoured $50B value for Tiktok, there are plenty of players who can disrupt it. Companies like YT, FB already know how to build social video platforms at scale. Just need to nail the creation tools and recommendations.
- mromanuk 6y ago> If I understood it correctly, they are adding it in the main app itself. Would a separate app make more sense, as YT is where I mostly go for watching mid/long length videos usually and their consumption pattern would be way different. I never understand when companies bundle a different app, as a feature inside their main app. Just bloating it and weakening the UX. Pretty much how IG did with Reels. There is a limit on how much you can stretch what a "tool" can do before breaking it and no longer full-filling any need. It would be much cleaner and clever for Google/YT to launch a 'different App' and then try to differentiate it and carve a niche for small videos. Trying to compete with Tik Tok being a "better" Tik Tok is certainly a dead end.
- draw_down 6y agoTurnabout is fair play, but I guess at some point we better get off our high horse about China copying everything.
- pletsch 6y agoI saw a lot of people spend an enormous amount of time in Uni (last few years) just scrolling and watching videos for hours on YouTube, I know it's a bit of a running joke how quickly Google axes projects, but the users/demand are already there and monetizing YouTube subs is significantly easier than monetizing TikTok followers.
- extremeMath 6y agoAfter Google screwed up my music transfer from Google Play to YouTube Music, I'm not using any new Google services. And it's not like there is any customer service to fix their own problems.
- popup21 6y agoI had a 3 year account containing videos of my game completely wiped without any notification. The account was terminated. I appealed and the bot effectively said "F you". I have nearly deleted all Google services and my YouTube viewership is dwindling every month. I use one of the Invidious sites when I do watch YouTube sourced content. I despise Google/YouTube with a passion.
- jrockway 6y agoAsking this question makes me sound really dumb, but... do TikTok creators get paid like YouTube creators? If not, this seems to be a strong advantage that YouTube has. As much as people complain about the monetization system, something is better than nothing, right?
- throwaway4good 6y agoYou can get paid as a TikTok creator ...
- sushshshsh 6y agoTell that to the creators making 6 dollars per million views :)
- what_ever 6y agoI never looked into this but couple of links show that it's much more than $6/Million views. > On average, my videos that have over 1,000,000 views have usually earned between $2,000-$5,000. https://onezero.medium.com/this-is-how-much-youtube-paid-me-for-my-1-000-000-viewed-video-1453cad73847 https://onezero.medium.com/this-is-how-much-youtube-paid-me-... Some more links - https://turbo.intuit.com/blog/relationships/how-much-do-youtubers-make-5035/ https://turbo.intuit.com/blog/relationships/how-much-do-yout...
- sushshshsh 6y agoResearch Nasim Aghdam. Youtube simply deems content unmonetizable. You'll get good rates on 5 views and 0 rates on a million views. :) Further, your 1M view video on mesothelioma is going to be paid much more than your 100M view video on needle drugs
- brown9-2 6y agoHow is Instagram Reels doing and why will Shorts fare any different?
- dangoor 6y agoI haven't looked at the Shorts feature, but I think the fact that both Reels and Shorts are being integrated into bigger, well-established interfaces will make a big difference (quite possibly negative). TikTok is just TikToks. Reels have to fight for positioning in an overall sea of Instagram features and Shorts will do the same. YouTube and Instagram have different focuses, though, and I think that could make a huge difference in the uptake. So my point is "they're sitting in different user experiences", which is why they'll fare differently. I just can't predict which will do better!
- throwaway4good 6y agoSounds like they are making the same mistake as Instagram is making: Trying to copy TikTok into their existing app. It is really a different media and they will end up annoying their existing users, making their app overly complex, canibalising their advertisement etc. etc.
- panpanna 6y agoDon't worry, they will shut it down within 2 years. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- paulpauper 6y agoAnd soon to be crypto scam ads and videos on there too ,which YouTube will ignore
- martin_a 6y agoComing to https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ in about two years.
- anaganisk 6y agoBest it can do is 6 months
- binarymax 6y agoIt’s amazing to me that Google execs fail to realize tiktok’s success isn’t because of features, but because of social and cultural relationships and intricacies. You can’t copy a socially evolved trend in a boardroom and expect it to work. Especially with a silly name like “shorts”.
- _lacroix 6y agoYes but what do you expect from the people who brought the world Google+? Google prints money in so many ways they should just stop trying to get into the social media game at this point. Stick to search, ads, email, cloud services, hardware, etc etc etc...
- dingaling 6y ago> Especially with a silly name like “shorts”. It's not even multilingual, which shows how little thought went into its selection
- srtjstjsj 6y agoIt's better than the working title, Google Play Youtube Shorts One Play Red.
- brickmort 6y agoThey have been experimenting with this for a few days now. A slightly different, possibly less branded version of this had already been on the Youtube app. I found myself sucked into it last week. I clicked on what looked like a funny short video and, before I knew it, I was 10+ videos onto the rabbithole. Whatever algorithm they are using, I think they really nailed it.
- bobbydreamer 6y agoWell still youtube thinks I like bomb videos after beirut explosion. What's good about tiktok is their algorithm of picking videos for users to watch.