YouTube first launched Shorts in India back in September 2020 right after the Indian government banned TikTok in the country. However, it became widely available to users around the world after a while. Initially, Shorts featured vertical videos of up to 30 seconds. However, that’ll change soon as you’ll be able to upload longer YouTube Shorts.
You’ll be able to upload longer YouTube Shorts of up to 3 minutes from October 15
Today, YouTube announced that from October 15 creators will be able to upload longer Shorts of up to three minutes in length. The company added that this feature is rolling out due to high demand from users. Besides allowing to upload longer Shorts, YouTube also announced a new template feature.
This feature will allow creators to reuse the format of other Shorts. Once the feature is available, you’ll be able to match the video clips to trending sounds pulled from other Shorts. So, if you like to hop on the trend to make your videos go viral, you can access YouTube’s template feature through the “remix button” seen in Shorts videos.
Does this sound familiar? Well, the TikTok app has a similar feature that allows users to modify their videos accordingly from preset video styles. Not to forget, Instagram already has a similar feature.
A new option is also here to halt Shorts videos from popping up on your feed
Last but not least, YouTube also announced a new “show fewer Shorts” option today. If you select this option, you will temporarily see fewer Shorts videos on your feed. The introduction of this option is just a hint that YouTube understands that many viewers don’t prefer TikTok-like content and stick to watching the long-form content on the platform.
Since Shorts was introduced as an alternative to TikTok, it’s no surprise to see the platform adding similar features. That’s not all, last year YouTube also started monetizing Shorts to encourage users to make short-form content. Time will tell if Shorts surpasses the popularity of TikTok.
