
YouTube launches  TikTok competitor, Shorts - SalimoS
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436158/youtube-starts-tiktok-competitor-short-form-video-instagram-reels-beta-test
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aronpye
Why 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.

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mrkramer
I wonder how Twitter is even alive because the amount of mismanagement that
happened in the last 10 years is staggering.

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jl6
Winner-takes-all-network-effect-first-mover-advantage.

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klmadfejno
Does 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.

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m-p-3
Probably made as an example by someone that isn't used to create that kind of
viral stuff.

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GrantZvolsky
To me it signals that it's a platform for the everyday user rather than a
small set of pixel-perfect influencers.

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klmadfejno
Does 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.

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nicoburns
I 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.

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newen
The thing about TikTok is it’s a very different experience for different
people due to its recommendation algorithm.

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jrockway
Asking 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?

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sushshshsh
Tell that to the creators making 6 dollars per million views :)

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what_ever
I 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-...](https://onezero.medium.com/this-is-how-much-youtube-paid-me-for-
my-1-000-000-viewed-video-1453cad73847)

Some more links -

[https://turbo.intuit.com/blog/relationships/how-much-do-
yout...](https://turbo.intuit.com/blog/relationships/how-much-do-youtubers-
make-5035/)

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sushshshsh
Research 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

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cblconfederate
Designed in China, Manufactured in California

oh the turntables

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mistermann
I have a feeling this is going to be an increasingly common theme.

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throwaway4good
At 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.

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cblconfederate
it 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

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binarymax
It’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”.

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dingaling
> Especially with a silly name like “shorts”.

It's not even multilingual, which shows how little thought went into its
selection

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actuator
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.

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.

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mromanuk
> 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.

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prlambert
Distribution. Getting an app installed is super tough.

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srtjstjsj
Embedding an app is a great growth hack.

But why not also have a standalone to build stronger affiliation?

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martin_a
Coming to [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/) in about
two years.

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anaganisk
Best it can do is 6 months

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beervirus
I predict this will be about as successful as Google+.

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panpanna
I 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.

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rchaud
Instagram 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.

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rishi_devan
"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

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throwaway4good
They will love the loop of an unskippable 15-second ad followed by a 15-second
video.

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brickmort
They 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.

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pletsch
I 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.

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throwaway4good
Sounds 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.

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amelius
I'm surprised about the absence of disruptive startups in this space.

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totetsu
Wasn't this space opened up by the death of vine?

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antoineMoPa
I think that the death of vine discouraged most attempts at making short
social video apps.

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srtjstjsj
Musically (which became TikTok) launched shortly after Vine.

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brown9-2
How is Instagram Reels doing and why will Shorts fare any different?

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dangoor
I 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!

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extremeMath
After 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.

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popup21
I 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.

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panpanna
Don't worry, they will shut it down within 2 years.

[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

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ElectronShak
How 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.

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tanjtanjtanj
I made an app a few years back that aggregated content from /r/youtubehaiku (a
subreddit devoted to short, typically comedic youtube videos) fairly
trivially.

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bobbydreamer
Well 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.

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paulpauper
And soon to be crypto scam ads and videos on there too ,which YouTube will
ignore

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terlisimo
My 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."

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blensor
On 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.

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srtjstjsj
No, 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.

