Short video content really appeals to a lot of users because it offers a short burst of entertainment without demanding any commitment. We've seen the proof in terms of the unprecedented growth of services like Snapchat, Instagram, and especially TikTok. This growth seems to have compelled bigger content platforms like YouTube to experiment with newer content forms such as 15-second long Stories introduced in November 2018. Much more recently, YouTube was also found experimenting with a TikTok-like feature called "Shorts" for relatively longer videos. And just a few days later, Shorts already seems to be rolling out to certain users.

For all of these users, the Shorts show up differently inside the YouTube app. This suggests YouTube may be testing the feature is a small set of users. Shorts appear under Watch History or video suggestions under the currently played videos – either separately or alongside Stories.

You can tell Shorts apart from Stories by the timestamp, a title, and the name of the creator on the former instead of the channels' thumbnail on Stories.

YouTube Shorts are of varying length and as per one user, videos of short length and vertical orientation might automatically get converted into this format. There seems to not be an exact way to upload videos as Shorts. But, unlike Stories, short videos don't appear to be limited to popular creators.

Just like TikTok or Instagram, you can't seek the short video but you do get the option to like or dislike it. You can also subscribe to the creator from the same window itself.

For now, there's only limited information about Shorts but we'll update you when we learn more. There is also a minor probability that the previously reported Shorts feature may be different from the short videos we see in the screenshots above.

Interestingly, this is not Google's first attempt at competing with ByteDance's TikTok. Back in January, Google launched Tangi, an app allowing indie creators to DIY and share short videos.