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Some veteran YouTube staff think Shorts might ruin YouTube
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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There's just something off about watching shorts and tiktok, if I use it for too long it feels like my head is going to explode. There's some great content there for things I'm interested in, like quick tips for software that I use, but if I watch 5 of those in a row I'm not going to remember anything. All in all I think the format, and regular youtube, would work a lot better if they didn't push so hard to get me to just sit there for hours on end.
Advertisers are also starting to realize this, and are paying less and less for TikTok. If people don't remember the comment they're actively looking for in 5 minutes, they definitely aren't going to remember the ad.
What the format is good for is reaching new subscribers, which actually makes YouTube's approach interesting because it can pull people to the longer content.
But then they go and down the "subscribed" page in shorts, completely nuking the idea.
In the experience of many youtubers, the shorts audience and long format audience is 2 distinctly different groups with almost no overlap.
Shorts may drive subscriptions, but it doesn't significantly translate to more views or watch time on normal videos.
Wasn't that one of the storylines from Max Hradroom? An extremely short ad format was invented (Blipverts) that literally made people's heads explode.