YouTube understands you’re resharing videos you created on YouTube Shorts — and the company wants to be credited. All the YouTube Shorts you repost to TikTok will now tell on you.
In a post about new components shared yesterday, a YouTube representative said that the company would start adding watermarks to Shorts videos when a creator downloads them.
As a result, some creators will make short-form videos in one app, download the video, and repost the identical clip to other platforms. In the post, YouTube is straightforward about why it’s adding watermarks.
“We’ve added a watermark to the Shorts you download so your viewers can see that the content you’re sharing over the platforms can be found on YouTube Shorts,” it reads.
All the leading short-form video platforms are fighting for creators and viewers, and other companies have moved about the cross-platform sharing issue in various ways. For example, downloaded TikTok videos hold long watermarks and the creator’s username, so viewers can quickly go to the app to locate the original video.
Meanwhile, it was no secret that many Instagram Reels creators were reposting their TikToks — watermarks and all — instead of making original content. Last year, Instagram said it wouldn’t promote Reels that had its competitor’s watermark. In April, it went even further, saying it would tweak its algorithm to provide preference to “original content” — essentially dangling a carrot for creators to make stuff just for Reels.
YouTube has been heavily pushing Shorts since it launched the product in 2020. The company set aside $100 million to dole out to creators who make Shorts, and short-form clips are taking up more and more real estate on the YouTube app, including in recommendations and a dedicated Shorts tab.
The Shorts watermark will start rolling out in the next few weeks on desktop and extend to mobile in the forthcoming months, according to the post. So get your watermark-free downloads in before that!
YouTube Shorts is a short-form video-sharing platform suggested by YouTube. The venue hosts user content much like YouTube’s primary service but limits components to 60 seconds in length. Since its liftoff, YouTube Shorts has accumulated more than 5 trillion views.
YouTube Shorts resembles TikTok. It presents 15 to 60-second long, user-generated videos in portrait mode, also known as vertical video. In addition, it allows users to add licensed music and captions. As a result, viewers scroll through endless videos. In addition, YouTube Shorts offers editing capabilities and the ability to interact with viewers by responding to comments on other videos. Although primarily intended to be scanned on smartphones, YouTube Shorts can be viewed on computers and tablets by writing #Shorts into the YouTube search bar.
YouTube Shorts was unleashed as a beta in India in September 2020, following India’s TikTok ban. Then, in March 2021, it was released as a beta in the United States. Finally, it was globally released in July 2021, after releases in various countries.
In May 2021, YouTube declared the YouTube Shorts fund, a system in which top Shorts creators could be reimbursed. YouTube described this as a way to “monetize and reward creators for their content” and that it would be “a $100M fund distributed throughout 2021-2022”, similar to TikTok’s $1 billion creator fund.
YouTube stated that the fund is “just a stopgap until YouTube creates a long-term monetization and support tool for short-form innovators that will be modeled after, but vary, from YouTube’s Partner Program.” When the fund was discharged in August 2021, YouTube sent invites to over 3000 creators, offering from $100 to $10,000 a month.
In January 2022, a study revealed that scammers pirated popular posts on TikTok to repost on YouTube Shorts, garnering millions of views. In addition, they pinned comments on their reposted videos containing commercial connections, which generated funds for them on a price per action or price per lead basis.
YouTube says that the finished Short will link to the full video it was shortened from, which could help make Shorts a perfect promotional tool for the creator’s longer content. A key incentive for them to dip in while YouTube resumes testing monetization options for the feature.
Viewers who appreciate a Short created with this tool wouldn’t have to move to the creator’s channel and search for the full video. Instead, an “Edit into a Short” mechanism is popping up inside the regular YouTube app.
Unlike other tools like Cut, which lets you use five seconds from a longer video in a Short, or Clips, which can be converted into Shorts, the Edit into a Short tool can’t be used on other users’ uploads. Instead, it’ll only appear in the Create menu if you’re viewing a video you uploaded.
YouTube has focused much on Shorts since it started rolling out the feature in 2020. It’s tried incentivizing creators to use the format by setting up a fund that paid creators if they uploaded Shorts. The company has also been padding out its library by converting existing videos to Shorts, as long as they were filmed vertically and under 60 seconds long. Last month, YouTube said that over 1.5 billion people watched Shorts each month.
YouTube is an online American video sharing and social media forum headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was pitched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is presently owned by Google and is the second most visited site after Google Search. YouTube has higher than 2.5 billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. As of May 2019, videos were uploaded at more than 500 hours of content per minute.
Eighteen months after posting its first video in October 2006 and ten months after its official launch, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion. Google’s right of YouTube expanded the site’s business model, from generating revenue from advertisements to delivering paid content like movies and exclusive content created by YouTube.
It also shows YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. YouTube also approved creators to participate in Google’s AdSense program, which seeks to generate more revenue for both parties. YouTube reported an income of $19.8 billion in 2020. In 2021, YouTube’s annual advertising revenue raised $28.8 billion.
Since its buy by Google, YouTube has grown beyond the core website into mobile apps, network television, and the ability to connect with other platforms. Video categories on YouTube include news, short films, music videos, video clips, feature films, documentaries, audio recordings, movie trailers, teasers, live streams, vlogs, and more.