YouTube Shorts Tops 1.5 Billion Logged-in Users Monthly Users (techcrunch.com) 65
In an effort to present itself as a viable competitor to the reigning short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube announced today its rival service YouTube Shorts is now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, less than two years after its launch. By comparison, TikTok announced 1 billion monthly users in September 2021. From a report: Though it hasn't announced updated figures since, TikTok was forecast to hit the 1.5 billion month user figure sometime this year. Related to its new milestone, YouTube also promoted Shorts' ability to drive viewers to creators' long-form video channels as a byproduct of its investments in Shorts. It's referring to the trend as "the rise of the multiformat creator" but, in reality, it seems to be more an admission that YouTube still sees more value in its longer-form content. The company, in its announcement, positioned its video platform as one that better reflects the reality of today's viewer, who engages with video at different times and places throughout the day. In some cases, users will want to quickly scroll through shorter content -- such as when killing time while out and about. At other times, they may be able to watch for longer periods and will turn to traditional YouTube videos to do so.
Am I at the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I came across a couple of those and just can't stand them.
They're in portrait mode which sucks....and well, not long enough to impart any real beneficial info, and generally no production value put into them.
I'm not on TikTok....but have seen it on friends' phones and aside from mostly stuff to laugh at, nah....not for me.
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You can play Shorts in the regular player if you add them to a Queue.
However, you can't expand the view of the Queue when the selected video is a Short, so you'd have to add at least one to the queue as well and expand that.
Ridiculous jumping through hoops ... *sigh*
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I hate them because I typically watch YouTube on my TV via Chromecast or Roku. The YouTube iOS app wants me to disconnect from the device I'm watching and have other videos queued up to watch a Short on my phone.
Why don't you just play on my TV? I get they will have bars, but don't make me disconnect from my TV if I see something interesting! Argh!
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That's a youtube player problem. They play just fine on my Xbox with vertical bars and don't interrupt with needing to watch on the phone.
I just wish the shorts p
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I'm with you, I also dislike the format a lot. I generally had a quite positive opinion of Youtube as a platform, at least when compared to the likes of Tiktok or Instagram; but recently Youtube seems to transform into another 'engagement over everything'-type platform with an almost deceptive search-function, pushy and clickbaity suggestions, and the shorts-format. What I hate about the shorts-format is, that it takes control away from the user in order to maximize engagement; no rewinding, no timestamps,
Re:Am I at the only one... (Score:4, Informative)
What I hate about the shorts-format is, that it takes control away from the user in order to maximize engagement; no rewinding, no timestamps, annoying autoplay, videos made to mindlessly scroll through.
FYI they're still youtube videos stored on the platform; you can ditch the shorts player! grab the id from "youtube.com/shorts/<ID>" and plug it into "youtube.com/watch?v=<ID>" and you get the normal youtube player with controls back.
Re:Am I at the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
I also have no interest in these whatsoever and I wish there was an option to remove them from the youtube home page.
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Am I the only one that can't stand these YT shorts things?
I came across a couple of those and just can't stand them.
They're in portrait mode which sucks....and well, not long enough to impart any real beneficial info, and generally no production value put into them.
I'm not on TikTok....but have seen it on friends' phones and aside from mostly stuff to laugh at, nah....not for me.
They are annoying as all fucking get-out. 90% of it is bots that scrape Reddit and read Reddit comments to you in a robotic voice.
That being said, Shorts don't have two 30-second ads at the beginning along with a handful of 30-second ads (skippable after 5 seconds) scattered throughout a 3 minute video...
In conclusion: Fuck YouTube and fuck Google.
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It doesn't matter what you like, it matters how easy it is to condition your brain to return to it.
Analytics show these shorts have massive retention for when folks have moments of boredom.
Little pings of dopamine are the long path to wealth for producers.
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I wonder about their 1.5 billion logged in users too. Maybe 1.5 billion logged in YouTube users, looking at all videos rather than just shorts.
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Yeah when they started popping up on some channels and for a while I was just confused. Are these like just teasers? Is the rest coming soon? Shit like legal analysis or electric engineering just doesn't work in this format.
I'm sure whatever people watch on TikTok would be fine here though.
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I also hate youtube shorts, and I know a lot of other people also hate them.
I am guessing these releases are an attempt to get people to use them more.
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Blocktube extension has an option to make them disappear nicely.
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Yep, it's annoying! :(
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I skip EVERY youtube short. They're not that informative and they're a waste of time.
I call them "videos for the ADHD".
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They overwhelm search results, and you can't adjus (Score:2)
stop filming vertically (Score:2)
stop filming vertically
it's just awful to watch.
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No, you are not.
If I wanted to watch a tiktok I would watch a tiktok.
Ooh--look--GM Skeptic has something new; let me check it out...
Hmmm, that's funny; it's not filling the screen.
Touch the screen to get the maximize symbol...and now I'm watching something completely different. An ad? who the hell knows?
What is the rule for ublock origin to block youtube shorts, please?
Does not mean anything (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of youtubers just simply also offer "shorts" now. Their regular watchers look at them as well.
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Exactly. This is typical monopolistic incumbent's success: people already have a Youtube account and simply post "shorts" using their existing account rather than bothering to open a separate TikTok account.
Just like people don't bother to remove the default browser to install a competitor. That's what monopolies can do. This tactic is old as dirt.
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Not quite as simplistic (and sarcastic) as you describe it.
They are adding features the users want, yes. But they're using their dominant position to drive users away from those who invented said features (TikTok).
Same as when Microsoft decided to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows: sure people wanted an readily-installed browser for free. But that essentially killed Netscape, because Netscape couldn't weather the unfair competition.
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yep, I ignore the shorts, and if a youtuber starts having more shorts than content then I unsubscribe
Logged in? (Score:2)
As a privacy professional I'll never understand why people log into Youtube. You don't need to be logged in to watch videos, and if you do a full cookie and fingerprinting block you're also screwing up their recommendation algorithm. Everytime I visit youtube.com I see their generic front page. It's glorious.
Youtube has RSS support, so I follow my favourite youtube channels that way.
Am I sure this blocks their profiling of my habits and interests? No, since my IP address could still be used for that. But it
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As a privacy professional I'll never understand why people log into Youtube.
Comments.
Also known as a considerable portion of their entertainment value.
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You don't need to be logged in to read the comments.
And for me personally not being able to quickly post comments is a small price to pay for increased privacy.
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You don't need to be logged in to read the comments.
I was more referring to the existence of the comments section. Can't have it without logins.
And for me personally not being able to quickly post comments is a small price to pay for increased privacy.
Agreed, but perhaps not wonder about the lack of privacy in a world full of social media addicts and attention whores. We don't even criticize narcissism anymore. Our society rewards it, and the comments section, isn't small. Neither is Facebook.
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Your approach makes sense for anyone who cares that strongly about privacy, but I just don't care enough. It all just boils down to a bunch of IDs stored in some DB tables with literal tens of billions of rows, that no human is ever going to even look through.
Additionally, Youtube's generic front page is horrible and its recommendation algorithm is amazing. I love when it recommends things I didn't even know I wanted to see that I would have never thought to search for.
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> It all just boils down to a bunch of IDs stored in some DB tables with literal tens of billions of rows, that no human is ever going to even look through.
But algorithms do, and they make recommendations. The profiles created about you affect everything from your job opportunities to your insurance eligibility, and so much more.
Heck, it's not even about you.
- If you have friends and/or children, they will be affected by your profiles. For example, it might become more difficult for them to get an (affor
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because I want to watch content I am interested in, not what the idiot majority of the planet thinks is lolz
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Youtube-Shorts? Are those the skippable bits? (Score:3)
Or is it a line of gender-neutral MBA clothing for summer days in the office?
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Not sure about logged in, but... (Score:2)
Not sure what logged-in users see, but since I don't log in I get *forced* to watch things in "shorts" mode sometimes and I hate it. It's like somebody said, "Hey, if the video is short let's make it a VV, one of the most hated things on our platform". I didn't think YouTube could top the annoying "hover to play" anti-feature; but they did. Congratulations, guys. Well done. [thespruceeats.com]
Do users watch on purpose, or by accident? (Score:3)
If a 'video' has that S logo it is an automatic skip. They might as well stamp it with useless. The portrait format is also meh, I was ignoring those long before they nicely started placing the avoid me S log on them.
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I think they fudged the numbers (Score:1)
At this point, you can't weed the #shorts crap out of normal videos any more, even if you disable the little 'Shorts' section. It's a pathetic attempt to take over a market they aren't suited for. If people want short-form videos like that they just use TikTok.
Here's why (Score:3)
You click on a video that looks interesting, only to then find out that it's one of these Tiktok wannabes.
I bet if you could see that you're about to see a "fun sized" video, far fewer would be clicked. There's an effin' reason I don't use TikTok. Guess what it is, YouTube.
I call bullshit (Score:2)
I'm calling bullshit right now on those figures.
The "shorts" feature never shows up for me when viewing on the YouTube app on my TV. They also never show up when viewing from a browser on my desktop. They ONLY show up when viewing from me phone, and I scroll right past them (I only use the phone for ChromeCast remote to the TV).
I can only assume I'm included in this statistic, because I saw that "Shorts" EXISTS, and it was visible on my screen at one point. And I think from time to time they also auto-play
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I was about to post that this sounds like bullshit. We're supposed to believe that approximately on in every five people on the entire planet logged in over the course of one month?
I spend a lot of time on computers, and I've never even heard of YouTube Shorts.
LOL, love the reasoning (Score:2)
YouTube also promoted Shorts' ability to drive viewers to creators' long-form video channels as a byproduct of its investments in Shorts.
You know where else you can do this? Literally every other platform. Creators are constantly cross-advertising their channels. There's nothing unique about YouTube Shorts that drives people to YouTube as well.
Am I the only one (Score:2)
Who noticed 'users' twice in the headline, or the only one who cares? Come on editors, if you're going to proofread anything at all, try to get the headlines right.
Accidental clicks (Score:2)
100% of those views are people accidentally clicking on them. I severely dislike the format for three reasons: No controls to scrub through the video, the video loops (which probably counts as another view just for starting it again), and the videos are vertical. I've learned to just not click in the first place.
Am I unknowingly logged in? (Score:2)
Because I don't use YT shorts. I may have accidentally browsed into the part then got confused on how to get out of it. I suspect I'm counted as one of the billions who are using it.
This stinks of a bandwagon fallacy. Having lots of "logged in users" doesn't necessarily mean any more people ought to be using it. Who knows, YT Shorts may have peaked and the market supply of interested eyeballs is exhausted.
YT Shorts and TikTok (Score:2)
Both hot on the trail of Ow! My balls!
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Balls.
1.5 billion portrait morons (Score:2)
Thanks, but no thanks.
Thank God. (Score:2)
Maybe Youtube will go all in and get rid of the long form videos, and people like me who don't like that crap will get several competing websites to choose from.
BadTube (Score:2)
And then they could renamein something like "BadTube"
Calculated How? (Score:2)
Is this counting the times I've accidentally clicked one before scrambling to work out how to exit from YT Shorts?
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You betcha.
Every click of yours was counted multpl times over.
Here's a thought ... (Score:1)
Use Adblock. (Score:2)
Use Adblock.
I have serious doubts about the numbers (Score:2)
I suspect that their count of users is wildly inflated, or at least doesn't reflect widespread adoption of Shorts.
Many people are already logged into YouTube. Some of them explicitly do that, but they're more likely to count as logged into YouTube because of being logged into Gmail or into the Chrome browser to enable syncing. YouTube is very popular, and if one of those logged-in users checks out even one Short they are probably getting counted as part of that 1.5 billion. That's not at all the same as Sho
Great for millennials (Score:2)
This is great news for millennials, because it will cause a demand for old executives to hire young new students to explain all this technology for them.
"What is this TikTok thing, and how can I compete with it? Bob, can you hire some 20-year olds to figure it out? Just tell them they'll be working on the newest, most exciting shorter short-form video content platforms around. Also, ask them how we can inject 30-second ads into 7-second video clips, without it seeming conspicuous."