Despite TikTok being the champion of short-form videos, YouTube has apparently been doing very well in the space, enough to share ad revenue with its creators. Now, the platform is attempting to make a leap, going from the small screens of phones and tablets and jumping to your home theater setup and TV screens.
Today, the firm announced that YouTube Shorts would be making its debut on TV. Now, if you have watched any YouTube Shorts, you'll know that the videos are not only short but also a majority are filmed vertically. As you can imagine, this posed quite a problem for YouTube when trying to bring Shorts to television initially. By taking in feedback, it was able to overcome these issues to build an experience that felt good on the big screen.
Perhaps the most important thing about the experience is that the interface needs to feel good. So YouTube created a new one from scratch. It tested different versions and found that two stood out, a minimal and a maximal version. In the end, users preferred the interface that had access to lots of different options. YouTube took this information and created an interface that is somewhere in the middle, stating that there will be more features to come at a later date.
YouTube Shorts for TV will be rolling out over the coming weeks to TV models that were released in 2019 or later. This will also be available on newer game consoles like the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5. If you don't have a TV or game console that supports Shorts, but you still want to know what the fuss is about, you can always down the YouTube app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to gain access on your phone or tablet.
Source: YouTube Blog