YouTube Tiktok

Image via Pexels

YouTube reportedly working on a service to rival TikTok

TikTok has captured the imagination and attention of the world. Will YouTube be able to compete?

YouTube Tiktok

Image via Pexels

TikTok, a Chinese-based app, has over a billion downloads on Google Play store. Every day, millions of users log in to upload new content or get their fix of the latest TikTok trends and challenges.

Google are rumoured to be looking to challenge TikTok by launching a TikTok-like service from within the YouTube mobile app. The Information claims that service will likely be called YouTube Shorts.

What is YouTube Shorts?

The service would likely leverage YouTube’s extensive library of licensed music while duplicating a lot of the current TikTok functionality.

The Information hasn’t given any indication on what YouTube might have in mind to differentiate the service from TikTok. YouTube creators would likely welcome the addition as it would allow them to focus on one platform.

According to the rumours, Shorts is only likely to roll out at the end of this year. I’m sure the management team at YouTube are kicking themselves for not having it ready for before the world came to a standstill.

Spike in video content during lockdown

The last month has seen an explosion of internet use with video for the first time being at the forefront of everything.

It seems that access to high-speed internet has become prevalent enough for video to become ubiquitous in both online entertainment and communication.

It’s quite likely that the online landscape will have changed substantially when we eventually emerge from our homes. Hopefully, YouTube are cooking up something fresh to motivate us.

Would YouTube be able to compete with TikTok?

It isn’t the worst of times for YouTube to be developing a rival. However, TikTok saw unprecedented growth in 2019, and reported a 125% growth since 2018.

Creating the app’s functionality is probably the easiest part, though. The app’s success has been driven by the sheer size and enthusiasm of TikTok’s online community of creators and consumers.

The app has hundreds of millions of users and and can be described as “a cultural force”. TikTok had approximately 842m first-time downloads from both Apple and Google’s app stores over the last 12 months.

Different audiences; different apps

If YouTube are looking to create a TikTok clone, I think they may find that the current YouTube audience is slightly different in both demographics and viewing habits than the folks watching and creating at TikTok.

TikTok has been another inexplicable success story; a site much like Vine with a value proposition that seems silly. Yet here we are more than billions of android installs later, and TikTok has become a source of entertainment, education and memes.

South Africa has just over 50 million people with only a fraction of them TikTok users, yet the #tiktoksouthafrica has over 400 million views.

Also read – These were the most popular videos in SA [watch]