Youtube Experimented With Merging Short and Long-Form Videos In One Feed.
YouTube is experimenting with incorporating longer video segments into its popular Shorts feed in an effort to capitalize on the format’s success. This seemingly paradoxical strategy intends to maximize viewership across all content genres by using the 70 billion daily views that Shorts delivers, according to the Social Media Today website.
The platform detailed its strategy, stating: “To help viewers better discover content across channels, formats, and lengths on YouTube, we’re running a few small experiments on the Watch Page and with Shorts.” If you’re a viewer in the trial, these novel discovery experiences could feature a mix of video formats, such as long-form videos where you’d normally see short-form videos (for example, the Shorts Feed) or new long-form video feeds.
YouTube’s strategy appears to be based on leveraging the success of Shorts to drive broader video promotion, but it’s unclear how horizontally formatted long-form films will fit into the vertically aligned Shorts feed. If not handled appropriately, this component may result in an unpleasant user experience.
Shorts have been a significant generator of engagement for YouTube as consumers increasingly choose shorter, bite-sized video material. Aligning suggestions around this format to increase overall viewership appears logical, but it is unclear how users will react to these changes.
YouTube also stated that long-form video clips viewed in the Shorts Feed may be classified as shorts in YouTube Analytics, which could mislead artists. However, YouTube’s overarching objective may be to transfer more viewers to a full-screen, vertically aligned stream, and these experiments could pave the way for that change.
