Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
YouTube copies Instagram and TikTok with new Shorts features
- Google has announced a slew of new features for YouTube Shorts.
- At least two of these features were taken from Instagram and TikTok.
- The company is also letting users more easily convert their landscape clips to Shorts.
YouTube followed the short vertical video trend by introducing Shorts back in 2020. Now, the company is grabbing a couple of features from Instagram Reels and TikTok for its Shorts.
YouTube announced six new Shorts-focused additions yesterday, starting with the “Collab” ability to record a Short in a side-by-side layout with an existing YouTube clip. It goes without saying that Instagram and TikTok have offered this feature for a while.
The Google-owned platform is also looking to rivals for its newly announced Q&A sticker functionality. This will let your audience ask questions, allowing you to respond via the comments or with another Short, much like Instagram and TikTok’s own features.
Which one do you use more often?
Otherwise, YouTube is also trying to make it easier for users to create Shorts from their existing content. To this end, it’s offering new tools so creators can convert their landscape videos into a portrait-oriented Short.
Other notable features announced by YouTube include the ability to save Shorts to a playlist, live videos in the Shorts feed, and the ability to quickly copy effects and audio from a remixed clip. Either way, it’s clear that the company is taking a few pages from rivals’ playbooks for some features.