“YouTube Shorts” takes on TikTok

Daily News Article   —   Posted on April 7, 2025

(by Mike Heuer, UPI) — YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for short videos ahead of a pending deadline for TikTok owner ByteDance to sell it or be banned from the United States.

ByteDance [had] until Saturday* to sell its U.S. operations to an American buyer or be banned from the country, which would cause many TikTok users to lose their accounts and existing content. *On Friday, President Trump extended the deadline by 75 days.

YouTube’s Shorts video feed competes with TikTok’s short-form video format, and the new creation tools that are to be made available before summer make it easier for users to edit their content and track its performance, CNBC reported.

Among the chief changes is how YouTube tracks view counts.

“What we are doing is going from when a short was played for a few seconds to when a viewer’s seen it at all as to how we counted views in Shorts,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in an interview posted on YouTube.

She said the change is based on feedback from content creators and helps them better understand when their shorts have been viewed and is especially helpful for creators who post content on multiple platforms.

Creators also will benefit from new editing tools that improve upon what Voolich called a “pretty basic editor” for video shorts.

“You import a bunch of things from your gallery and then, in flow, we’re going to let you time that to music from our very wide music library,” she said.

The new video editor allows creators to pinch and zoom their videos to “really make it your own,” Voolich said.

YouTube also is providing content creators with templates for short videos.

Instead of the current practice of uploading content one at a time from a camera, creators will be able to use a template to upload all of their content at once.

More camera roll integration also enables creators to make stickers from their camera rolls to use in the video background and for other purposes.

Shorts also have gone to three minutes, which Voolich says support deeper narratives and expands the variety of content available on the Shorts platform.

In the two years since YouTube added its Shorts platform to its monetization program, it has been growing. …

Among recent innovations Voolich cited is enabling creators to use generative AI to create entire videos or just make stickers to use in their videos.

Published at United Press International (UPI) on April 3. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.

 



Background

The TikTok app has about 170 million U.S. users.

TikTok’s future in the United States has been in limbo ever since former President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation last year, with lawmakers citing national security concerns over the possibility of China accessing American users’ data:

  • On April 1, 2024, President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law.
  • This legislation...addresses national security concerns related to TikTok, [which is] owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
  • The law requires ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok within nine months — approximately January 19, 2025 — with a possible 90-day extension if Biden determine[d] significant progress toward a sale has been made.
  • If ByteDance fails to sell TikTok to an approved buyer within this timeframe, the app faces a nationwide ban in the United States, prohibiting it from U.S. app stores and internet hosting services.
  • The legislation was driven by fears that the Chinese government could access U.S. user data or manipulate content through TikTok, though no public evidence has confirmed such actions.
  • TikTok has vowed to challenge the law in court, arguing it violates free speech rights.

(from a Grok search "what legislation did biden sign regarding tik tok")

The New York Post reports:

  • Oracle is seen as the front-runner to buy TikTok in part because it already hosts TikTok’s data on its servers but other tech giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Perplexity, are also pushing for a deal.
  • AppLovin, the mobile technology company that provides a platform for app developers to grow their businesses, also jumped into the race this week.
  • In addition, there is a list of billionaires and celebrities — ranging from Mr. Beast to Mr. Wonderful — who have also reportedly been angling to purchase the app.