SAN FRANCISCO: YouTube is rolling out its version of social media rival TikTok, a new short-form video service called Shorts, enabled within its video-sharing platform.
YouTube will first test the feature in India over the next few days and then expand to more countries in the coming months.
YouTube’s new product, which will compete with Facebook’s Reels and TikTok, will let users record short mobile-friendly videos and then add special effects and soundtracks pulled from a music library.
The announcement also comes as Oracle Corp and China’s ByteDance team up to keep TikTok operating in the United States, beating Microsoft in a deal structured as a partnership rather than an outright sale.
YouTube’s entry into the short-form video service space coincides with TikTok’s ban in one of its biggest market, India, following the country’s escalating tensions with China.
READ MORE: Microsoft’s offer to buy TikTok’s US operations rejected
Shorts is a new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using their mobile phones.
User-generated short videos were born on YouTube starting with our first upload, a short 18-second video called “Me at the zoo.”
As technology advances, creators and artists can now take advantage of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content anywhere in the world. .Shorts is a new way to express yourself in 15 seconds or less.
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