Explained: What is YouTube Shorts? The rival platform of TikTok, Instagram Reels

New Delhi, May 30: Content creation has gone through a sea change in the last few years. With internet data getting cheaper by day and broadband connections reaching every nook and corner of the country, internet consumption has increased manifold. Gone are the days when people used internet on desktops and laptops.

Today, people are using the internet on smartphones. As the size of the users increased, technologies evolved faster than before and video creation became possible at the fingertips. Plenty of apps took birth as people tried to create video content and YouTube was flooded with videos by creators across the nation.

On the other hand, the photo and video sharing sites Instagram (with its Reels) and China's TikTok attracted people in big numbers by giving good platforms for users to create short videos. It turned out to be runaway hits among netizens.

As Google started realising that the game is fast-changing in this space, YouTube came up with a platform called YouTube Shorts to compete TikTok and Instagram.

So, what is YouTube Shorts?
Like TikTok and Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts allow users to create clips less than 60 seconds. Netizens can create videos using a smartphone and the Shorts camera in the YouTube app. The platform has creation tools which make it easy to create short-form videos with its multi-segment camera.

The major advantage that the users will have in this platform is that it has a huge library of music and audio which brings your short videos to life. You can sample songs or audio clips from any eligible video from the library, add it to your Shorts, and make the video magic happen.

However, users should note that it is vertical videos. The platform's interface is similar to TikTok and YouTube displays the short video on its homepage.

YouTube Shorts was launched in September 2020 and has become a quite popular platform in the last 17 months among youths.