Another TikTok competitor has arrived, this time from YouTube.
YouTube on Monday announced YouTube Shorts, which the company described as a "new way to express yourself in 15 seconds or less," allowing users to "shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones" that can be recorded with music chosen from a "large library of songs." It's clearly meant to compete with TikTok, which is also based around users creating short videos often accompanied by music.
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Shorts is just the latest TikTok competitor after Facebook also launched its own version called Instagram Reels, which similarly involves making short 15-second videos. ByteDance ahead of the launch of Reels slammed Facebook for what it described as "plagiarism."
YouTube will first launch an early beta of Shorts in India, where, CNBC notes, TikTok itself has been banned.
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