YouTube Just Won’t Let TikTok Win
I have always said that TikTok is what YouTube was before it went corporate, and it would appear that instead of returning to its former glory, like other social media platforms YouTube has decided to try and hop on the bandwagon through YouTube Shorts.
Similar to Instagram’s creation of Reels, YouTube Shorts is the latest in the race to capitalize on the happy marriage between shortened attention spans and user generated content. In watching the Youtube Shorts video, I didn’t expect the site to reference the origin or impetus behind their latest idea, but I still couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the declaration of Shorts as a “new” offering from the Google owned platform.
As a return to their roots, Shorts is YouTube’s attempt to return to being the primary video-sharing platform on the market. As stated on the YouTube Blog
“User-generated short videos were born on YouTube starting with our first upload, a short 18-second video called ‘Me at the zoo.’”
And while I agree with this assessment, I think it is also important to analyze what caused YouTube to change and whether or not the site will ever be the same.
YouTube and User Generated Content
To quote myself without using quotes (and to get use out of my dissertation), the section…
