YouTube Updates Shorts with New Collaboration, Q&A, and Playlist Tools
YouTube Shorts was a real masterpiece from the company which immediately skyrocketed the engagement of the platform. It goes to show that short-form content is here to stay, and that YouTube is regularly making amends in hope of attracting new, and benefitting existing creators.
Today, the company announced some major updates to the way you can create content on YouTube Shorts.
Amongst the new features is a long-awaited Collab tool, which like the name suggests, allows you to collaborate with other creators and diversify your content in all the creative ways you can imagine. For example, you could collaborate with a friend, or a musician to create a music video.
The Collab tool makes it easy to record a Short in a side-by-side format, so that both creators’ videos are visible at the same time. You may have seen this on other platforms, but it’s definitely a new addition here.
Other highlights of the new features include the Q&A Sticker, which lets you ask your audience questions in your comments, and the Live vertical feature, which lets live creators get discovered right in the Shorts feed.
The Q&A Sticker is a great way to interact with your audience and get feedback on your content. You can use the sticker to ask your audience questions about your video, or you can use it to ask for suggestions for future videos.
Again, this is something that’s widely used on other platforms like TikTok, but something of a new addition on YouTube. It’s great that the platform is studying the market demand and acting accordingly, but some exclusive features would definitely be nice too.
Now you can also save Shorts to playlists right on YouTube, so you can streamline the Shorts you like, and then find inspiration later. This can especially be useful for those just starting out their short-form journey on YouTube.
But the most important update is the fact that YouTube will be rolling out some changes in the future where you would be able to change any of your horizontal videos into a Short, of course with editing tools, so that you don’t loose important video, and it is much easier for you as a long-form creator to simply extract bits of content out of your videos from the comfort of the platform itself.
The Direction.
Like I mentioned earlier, YouTube Shorts is here to stay. With over 50 billion views daily, it is now a tough competitor to TikTok, the reigning king of short-form video. YouTube is pulling out all the stops to lure in more creators, knowing that more creators means more engagement.
Its only a matter to time till we see more platform introducing this (like Reels on Facebook and Instagram). This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.
