YouTube has long been the go to place for video content on the internet. While there have been attempts by other companies to take over the throne, they have been unsuccessful.
Do you remember Vine, Dailymotion, Vimeo?
However there is now a “new” player on the block.
TikTok
TikTok is home to the internets short form video content. It has a billion users, of which many are younger people. While it has been successful as a platform in attracting many users with its dopamine filled short form video content of dances, memes and funny challenges, it has been under scrutiny due to security and privacy concerns in many nations such as the United States, India, Pakistan etc. and is banned in quite a number of countries.
Due to this, other companies have started their own version of TikTok.
Instagram introduced Instagram Reels for short form content in November 2020 and YouTube launched YouTube Shorts in September 2020.
YouTube Shorts is by far more interesting and exciting than Instagram Reels as YouTube has already been the place for video content on the Internet.
With the introduction of Shorts, YouTube will be able to host both long form content and short form content on its site.
What are YouTube Shorts?
Youtube Shorts are any vertical videos uploaded to YouTube that are less than 60 seconds long.
YouTube automatically identifies these videos as Shorts but creators can include “#Shorts” in the video Title or in the video description so that YouTube can identify it quicker.
These YouTube shorts are just like regular videos and are showed in the channel page, but there are now “Shorts Shelves” on the YouTube mobile app on both iOS and Android.
These Shorts Shelves contain various YouTube Short Videos related to the content of the video you are watching or any random viral short video.
What is really exciting is that since there is a small amount of short videos on the platform now, even videos by people with a low amount of subscribers would get picked up and shown in the Shorts Shelf, leading to more views, engagements and subscribers!
I will now share how YouTube Shorts have affected my channels growth 👀
My Analytics
The spike has been due to shorts alone!
Before: 422 Views, 4hrs Watch Time, 3 subs, 8.2k impressions (1st Week — 3 Normal Videos)
After: 2249 Views, 17hrs Watch Time, 7 subs, 18.2k impressions (2nd Week — 3 YouTube Shorts)
So my views have 5x, watch time 4x, Impressions 2x.
This is insane! 🤯
YouTube really loves Shorts and is promoting it a lot!
Consider subscribing to my YouTube Channel for videos about books, techs, apps, lessons from legends etc. !
Originally published at https://sharvesh.com on November 22, 2020.
