YouTube copies competitors with yet another TikTok-style feature
YouTube is making yet another big change, implementing more TikTok-style features to Shorts as the rival platform’s future hangs in doubt.
Over the past few months, YouTube has made a series of updates to Shorts to make them similar to howTikTokclips and Instagram Reels function.
In October 2024, theyincreased their durationfrom a max of 60 seconds long to three minutes.
They followed this up on March 31 bychanging how views are tallied. Now, rewatching a Short multiple times or just scrolling past one counts as a view.
And on April 3, the Google-owned platform unveiled more updates to Shorts with a new video editor, music, stickers and more.
YouTube announces more TikTok-style additions
According to YouTube, this Spring, creators will be able to spice up their Shorts in a series of new ways.
The first is a new editor, which lets users add music, make edits to the timing of clips and make more precise adjustments.
Users can also add music, which will automatically align clips to the rhythm, thus saving creators a lot of time manually syncing them.
Templates will also be added by using photos from one’s gallery.
Finally, Shorts will be adding image stickers and AI stickers. “Simply describe the sticker you envision, and we’ll generate it for you, giving you a sticker that is truly one of a kind and perfect for expressing yourself,” YouTube explained.
These updates, set to arrive later in 2025, come as TikTok’s future remains unknown. The company has been ordered to sell and there are some last-minute offers coming in from the likes ofAmazonthree days before the deadline.
TikTok launches Footnotes in the US to add context to videos
YouTube co-founder doesn’t want his kids watching Shorts
YouTube makes creating AI videos easier as platform closes in on $40B in ad revenue
Former President Joe Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill back in 2024, causing the short-form video platform to go dark for just over 12 hours.
President Trump took office just a day later andsigned an executive order extending enforcement of the ban for 270 days, making the new divest-or-ban deadline August 12, 2025.
