Google is also trying to stem the TikTok phenomenon and grab at least part of its one billion users, all very young. As reported by the online newspaper The Information, in fact, YouTube would be about to throw one new section called "Shorts" precisely to compete with the Chinese social network.
The rumors do not speak of an app in its own right but of a feed dedicated to short videos, within the YouTube app. The big advantage of YouTube over other would-be competitors of TikTok is the infinite music library, on which YouTube already holds the reproduction rights, which can be used as a background for videos on Shorts. Furthermore, compared to TikTok, YouTube boasts greater credibility and transparency that should keep it safe from the heavy controversies that have accompanied the impetuous development of the Chinese app. According to The Information YouTube Shorts will arrive by the end of 2020, but the exact date is not yet known.
YouTube Shorts: what it will look like
The information collected and published by The Information would seem confirmed by some lines of code present in the latest versions of the YouTube app, and published by Xda Developers, in which you can find some strings referring to "Shorts". From such strings it seems that it will be possible choose the video playback speed between "Normal" (1X), "Fast" (2X) and "Slow" (0,5X). The background music, as already mentioned, will be chosen by the user from the extensive YouTube Music catalog. It is not clear instead what will be the maximum duration of a Short video, nor if there will be rankings dedicated to this type of content. If there were, then YouTube would risk becoming two apps in one, generating not a little confusion.
TikTok, continuous growth
While everyone tries to counter TikTok, the growth of the Chinese social network dedicated to the very young seems to never stop. Launched in 2016 in China, TikTok was initially called Musical.ly but after the acquisition by Bytedance it changed its name and, in 2018, the international version was released and the app began to circulate around the world among hundreds of millions of users. At the end of 2019, one billion actual TikTok users were estimated.
YouTube Shorts, how Google's response to Tik Tok works
