What you need to know
- Google is testing out a new design in YouTube that includes a prominent 'Create' button.
- The company is aiming to drive more user attention to YouTube Shorts by smoothening out the video creation process.
- Shorts remains available in India only at this time.
Google continues to build out its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts. The company has the short form video service as part of its main-line YouTube app, and it's currently aimed solely at the Indian market, though Google still has plans to expand to global markets.
A new feature for Shorts, spotted by the folks over at Android Police, will now make it easier to leapfrog off playing a music video on you like on YouTube into creating a 'Short' inspired by that very music video. The company will now be including a new 'Create' button in the list of actions that appear under a YouTube video, sitting alongside the like, share, and download buttons. It only shows up for select music videos, presumably those that Google already includes in the Shorts music library.
On rival platforms like TikTok, there's no content library with that much breadth. There are user-uploaded sounds, but Google is leveraging its advantage as a streaming music service to offer more to consumers. It's worth noting that TikTok remains banned in India at this time, leaving YouTube's only competition in this space as Instagram's Reels.
Of course, there's the question about whether users who are actively viewing a video would even want to start recording a Short, to begin with. They are consuming, and the shift to creation may not be something that they would want to explore. It's great for Google to have the button there because they want more users to use Shorts, but not all users would appreciate the newfound prominence. Then again, Shorts is in Beta. It's questions like this that Google would want to answer before it rolls it out worldwide.
Have you tried out YouTube Shorts? Let us know in the comments below.
