YouTube's answer to TikTok's short videos is finally available in Singapore

First announced in September 2020, YouTube Shorts was launched in select countries as an answer to popular short-form videos that took off with TikTok. In fact, you might have seen some clips on YouTube for the last couple of months.

Now, Shorts are available in more than 100 countries, with Singapore-based content creators now able to record and upload YouTube Shorts. Beyond polished and well-edited long-form YouTube content, the platform is now trying to woo mobile creators with its new product offering.

YouTube Shorts come with all the basic tools that made TikTok popular. Features include:

• Ability to add text at specific points of your Short
• Also, the ability to add captions too
• Recording of up to 60 seconds via the Shorts camera
• Adding clips from your phone’s gallery to the YouTube Shorts camera
• Adding of basic filters to colour-correct Shorts
• Ability to sample audio from other YouTube Shorts and YouTube videos from across the globe
• More visual effects (to be added)

YouTube hopes that the short-form video format would take off on its platform - be it quick recipes, comedic skits, twerking XMMs, or react videos.

Shorts wouldn’t just only get a dedicated feature section on the YouTube homepage; it would also be integrated into the larger YouTube platform so users can jump from Shorts to longer videos if they’re interested in the full songs used to make these clips.

“We want to make it easy and fun to create Shorts. As we continue to build Shorts alongside our creators and artists, we’ll be adding more features for users to try,” said Todd Sherman, Global Product Manager for YouTube Shorts.

The beta is moving on a global rollout timeline, so be patient if it’s not your turn.

ALSO READ: YouTube to launch $133m creator fund for Shorts video feature

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.