YouTube Shorts: A Game-Changer in the Realm of Short-Form Videos
Introduction
In the ever-evolving world of digital content, YouTube Shorts has emerged as a game-changer in the realm of short-form videos. It is the short-form section of the American online video-sharing platform YouTube. Aimed at competing with TikTok, YouTube Shorts focused on vertical videos and offered a unique space for creators to share bite-sized content that captivates audiences quickly and effectively. Ever since its launch on July 13, 2021, it has collectively earned over 5 trillion views and the number is still rising.
On October 15th, 2024, Shorts allowed videos to be up to 3 minutes long. This update could change the short-form video game, especially considering the potential TikTok ban in the US in 2025. In this article, let's look at the beginning, develoment and future of YouTube Shorts.
What is YouTube Shorts?
YouTube Shorts is a short-form section created by YouTube to compete with TikTok, an online video platform for short clips. It focuses on vertical videos between 15 and 180 seconds. These short videos not only provide fantastic ways for viewers to get information quickly or entertain themselves, but also enable creators to amass a large following and receive more revenues.
Development of YouTube Shorts
History
- 2020: Created by YouTube to compete with TikTok, an online video platform for short clips
- September 2020: The YouTube Shorts beta was made available in India on September 15, shortly after TikTok was banned in India on June 29
- March 2021: Released in the US and was later globally released on July 13, 2021.
- August 2022: YouTube announced plans to make the Shorts feature available on its smart TV app
- December 2022: YouTube published its annual blog post documenting the top videos and creators of the year, with Shorts receiving its own section of the post for the first time
- September 2023: Google announced YouTube Create, a video editing app designed for YouTube creators, in order to facilitate the growth of Shorts
- October 2024: YouTube announced that shorts will be able to be up to 3 minutes, and from now all vertical 3 minutes or shorter videos will be turned into shorts
Achievements
Ever since YouTube Shorts was launched, the number of short videos on the platform have been increasing steadily. Statistics show that as of November 16, 2024, there are 1 billion YouTube Shorts on the platform, with 25 million new ones added monthly. And it's estimated that there could be up to 1.5 billion Shorts by the end of 2025.
Number-of-YouTube-Shorts-over-time
Source: https://photutorial.com/youtube-shorts-statistics/
Besides, more than 52 million channels have uploaded Shorts. And Google revealed in their Q3 2024 earnings call that of all the channels uploading to YouTube each month, 70% are uploading Shorts.
Source: https://abc.xyz/2024-q3-earnings-call/
According to Wikipedia, over 2 billion people in the world used YouTube Shorts in 2023. Given that the global population currently stands at a little over 8.1 billion, it means that over a quarter of everyone on earth uses YouTube Shorts. In the US, over 153 million people used YouTube Shorts, a little under half of the country's population in 2023. It’s also worth noting that the US users are expected to grow to 175.1 million this year.
Number-of-YouTube-Shorts-users-in-the-US-2023-2027
Image Source: https://adamconnell.me/youtube-shorts-statistics/
3. Soar in average daily views
In June 2021, the average number of daily YouTube Shorts views was around 30 billion. By February 2022, it had already increased to 50 billion, and YouTube hit 5 trillion all time views on Shorts. According to Google’s Q1 2024 earnings call, the average number of views that go to YouTube Shorts videos daily has now reached over 70 billion. The increasing number predicts a promising future for YouTube Shorts.
Source: Alphabet Investor Relations
Image Source: https://adamconnell.me/youtube-shorts-statistics/
Source: https://abc.xyz/2024-q1-earnings-call/
What is Trending in YouTube Shorts?
You may wonder what content people like to watch in YouTube Shorts. Here is the introduction about the most popular niches and top creators of YouTube Shorts.
Top 10 niches that get millions of views in YouTube Shorts
According to the data from tubebuddy, the top niches that get millions of views in YouTube Shorts are: Entertainment, Food and Drink, Video Games, Sports, Crafting, Family and Parenting, Animals and Pets, Movies and Television, Science and Technology, News.
Top 10 niches that get millions of views in YouTube Shorts
Source: https://www.tubebuddy.com/blog/10-youtube-shorts-niches/
Entertainment is by far the most popular Shorts niche, accounting for over 17% of all YouTube Shorts views over the 90 day data-collecting period. Viewers are mostly watching pranks, challenges, and a special genre known as “oddly satisfying” within this niche. Food and Drink ranks second, including topics like cooking tutorials, food reviews, even mukbang and so on. The third niche is Video Games. Games that are getting the most views from Shorts are: Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, and Fortnite. The fourth niche is Sports, specifically fishing, basketball, martial arts, and football. Crafting is the top five niche, with popular categories being drawing, woodworking, paper art, etc.
January 2025
Source: https://sendshort.ai/statistics/shorts/
Contents about Family and Parenting are also popular, especially those related to marriage and wedding, childbirth and pregnancy. Besides, channels about Movies and Television get loads of views as well, especially those related to the shows or films during their spikes. The ninth niche is Science and Technology, where people pay attention to consumer electronics, robotics, and science experiments. Finally, short-form content has now become a major way that people consume the news, with Shorts around current events, politics, and trending news stories are crushing it on YouTube Shorts.
Top YouTube Shorts creators
- MrBeast
As the most subscribed YouTube Channel at present, MrBeast is a YouTube sensation known for his extravagant challenges and philanthropy. His short-form content captures the essence of his larger-than-life content in bite-sized clips, attracting viewers to watch the entire video. Up to January 2025, MrBeast has owned over 342 million subscribers on YouTube, surpassing the official US population estimate.
Source: https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/streamers/news-mrbeast-s-youtube-channel-surpasses-official-us-population-estimate-subscribers
- Mark Rober
Mark Rober is a former NASA engineer and popular science communicator known for his creative engineering projects. His Shorts feature fun experiments and educational content that inspire curiosity.
Mark Rober-YouTube-Subscription
- Zach King
Zach King is famous for his magical editing skills, creating visually captivating illusions. His Shorts showcase quick, mind-bending tricks that leave viewers amazed.
Zach King-YouTube-Subscription
- Khaby Lame
Khaby Lame gained fame for his humorous, no-nonsense reactions to overly complicated life hacks. His Shorts highlight the simplicity of everyday solutions, making them universally relatable.
Khaby Lame-YouTube-Subscription
- Bella Poarch
Bella Poarch is known for her lip-sync videos and engaging personality. Her Shorts often feature catchy music and playful expressions that resonate with a younger audience.
Bella Poarch-YouTube-Subscription
- Tiko
Tiko is a gaming creator known for his entertaining Fortnite content, often featuring a fish character. His Shorts combine gameplay highlights with humor, appealing to gamers of all ages.
Tiko-YouTube-Subscription
- The Try Guys
This brand initially started to gain traction through Buzzfeed, and not not long after was seen to have mastered the art of Youtube Shorts. With a diverse range of channels, the main channel, is focused towards more long form content and their alternative channel is focused towards the growth of their youtube shorts content. This alternative approach, highlighted behind the scenes footage, feeling the curiosity of their targeted viewers. They also were creative enough to, use these short videos to highlight captivating segments from their longer videos giving viewers previews of their upcoming videos.
Pros and Cons of YouTube Shorts Compared with Other Platforms
As mentioned ahead, YouTube Shorts was created by YouTube in 2020 to compete with TikTok. In the same year, Instagram also launched its short-video section, Instagram Reels. So now let's see the pros and cons of YouTube Shorts compared with the other two platforms.
Pro1: Higher exposure potential
According to data, YouTube ranks second among the Most Popular Social Media Platforms in 2024 with over 2.53 billion users around the world, ahead of Instagram and TikTok. One billion hours of videos being watched everyday, the platform offers immense exposure potential for content creators and brands alike.
Most-popular-social-media-platforms-in-2024
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/most-popular-social-media-platforms
Besides, short videos are also placed in multiple places throughout YouTube: in the Shorts tab within the YouTube app, and on the homepages of the creators' channels, which also contributes to higher exposure potential.
Pro2: Traffic to channels and longer videos/Better content ecosystem
For one thing, YouTube Shorts can serve as a lead magnet to YouTuber's longer and more monetized videos. When a viewer watches short videos, he/she may get attracted and automatically flow to the YouTuber's channel, thus increasing the view rate and revenue of the latter's previous videos. In comparison, viewers are less likely to do so if they are watching a TikTok or Instagram Reel because they have to click out of an app and into another one, which is troublesome.
For another, YouTube provides better content ecosystem. TikTok and YouTube Shorts are both built around bite-sized, fast-paced content that encourages users to keep scrolling. In contrast, YouTube Shorts exists within a broader YouTube environment, allowing viewers to easily transit from short to long-form content, creating opportunities for deeper audience engagement. And now, it’s blurring the lines even further by enabling Shorts to be as long as 3 minutes.
content-mix-comparison
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Pro3: Less cost consuming for YouTubers
Before, YouTubers were creators of long and landscape videos, which took a lot of time, energy and money to make. Now with YouTube Shorts, they can spend less time, energy and money as long as they have an idea and a mobile phone. Even video editing can be done simply and directly on the app.
Moreover, YouTube Shorts creators can also get revenue from the Shareable Ad Revenue Fund, which works by sharing revenue from ads running between videos in the Shorts Feed, and then rewarding creators for views and content while also covering the cost of music licensing for sounds.
Payment-Process-for-Creators-Posting-YouTube-Shorts
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Con1: Fewer optimization options and less popular editing tools
YouTube provides editing tools like YouTube Create and YouTube Shorts Camera to help creators make Shorts or turn long-form videos into shorts. However, as the statistic shows, fewer than 10% of creators use YouTube’s Shorts editing tools and many use TikTok’s editing tools instead.
Source: https://adamconnell.me/youtube-shorts-statistics/
That's because the editing tools YouTube provides are less comprehensive than TikTok's editing tools, which offers more optimization and customization options. As you know, videos can become more eye-catching only with the use of interesting and creative special effects and AR features. Hopefully, this con may go away over time as YouTube Shorts grow.
Video-editing-comparison
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Con2: Recommendation algorithm
Each platform has a different algorithm that decides what content users see.
Algorithm-comparison
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Compared to Reels and YouTube Shorts, TikTok stands out with its sophisticated algorithm which can serve personalized videos that keep users hooked. In contrast, YouTube Shorts leverages YouTube's existing recommendation system, which helps integrate short-form content with traditional, longer videos but works not as effective as TikTok's. What's more, although YouTube Shorts now allow videos to be up to 3 minutes long, it hasn't improved its recommendations yet, which means that videos with the length of 1-3 minutes may be not recommended as much as shorter ones.
Con3: Lower engagement rate, comment rate, and watch rate
With the average engagement rate of 2.34% in 2024, TikTok is the most engaging short-form video platform, followed by Reels in second at 1.48%. Comparetively, YouTube Shorts trails behind at 0.78%.
|
Engagement-rate-comparison |
Engagement-rate-evolution-comparison |
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Besides, YouTube Shorts also fall behind in comment rate and watch rate.
|
Comment-rate-comparison |
Watch-rate-comparison |
Source: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/tiktok-vs-reels-vs-shorts/
Conclusion
YouTube Shorts has emerged as a game-changer in the realm of short-form videos. Since its launch in 2020, it has gained huge increase in the number of short videos, views, and users. For creators, it can bring higher exposure potential, more traffic and revenue, and less cost. Besides, its viewers can gain a better content ecosystem by conveniently transiting from short content to longer ones on YouTube. But we have to confirm that it still falls behind TikTok in terms of engagement rate, comment rate, and watch rate. And it also requires improvements in its recommendation algorithm, optimization options and edting rools provided. However, considering the potential TikTok ban in the US and other countries, YouTube Shorts is likely to stand out in the end.