In an official blog, Chief Product Officer of YouTube, Neal Mohan announced that the company is set to launch the YouTube Shorts beta in the United States in March.
Neal also announced a bunch of features YouTube will get in the coming months. The most important being giving more creators access to Shorts in the US.
Soon after TikTok went down under the hill in many regions, new competitors came to the scene. Facebook-owned Instagram released its short-video format feature Reels. Whereas YouTube launched YouTube Shorts, which is currently in beta in India.
In fact, a lot of YouTubers in India have been using this new feature to keep their subscribers updated about their channel and personal life. Moreover, the usage of YouTube Shorts tripled since December, as per the company.
YouTube Shorts rakes in more than 3.5 billion daily views globally, which is a big number, to be honest. And soon this feature will go live for the YouTube creators in the US.
YouTube began working on a TikTok competitor back in April 2020. However, Shorts made its debut in India in September 2020. As already mentioned, Instagram was also trying to take a piece of the pie created by the ban of TikTok in India.
The official blog also announced new monetization features, including applause
YouTube also wants to bask in the opportunity and find new ways to keep the users hooked to its platform. Additionally, Neal also announced some new monetization features.
This includes a new feature called “applause.” Notably, it is a one-time-buy clapping animation that appears on top of the video. Creators will get a share of the revenue for each applause purchased.
Super Chat is already there to help YouTubers generate extra revenue via their YouTube channel. Note that Neal did not shed light on when we will see this feature being available to the creators. We assume it to arrive by the end of this year.
YouTube Beta is also testing out a new feature to provide a new integrated shopping experience. The company is working on this feature and probably will roll out the feature by the end of this year.
This new integrated shopping place would allow people to purchase merchandise from YouTubers they trust. Creators can simply tag the products in their videos, allowing viewers to purchase them if they like them. Currently, YouTubers can sell products that fall under the beauty and electronic categories.
Last, YouTube will soon expand its “chapters” feature that lets you add specific timestamps in your video. They’ll be added automatically to relevant videos that require chapters.