TikTok is becoming a craze in India with its popularity across all age groups. Many have become overnight stars by sharing their creative videos on TikTok platform. TikTok is a popular Chinese video-sharing social networking platform owned by Beijing based ByteDance. The company was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, but the TikTok App was launched in 2017 outside China. Within a short time, TikTok took the world by storm. It became an instant hit among the young population.
Google is aware of this fact as the popularity of the rival is increasing day by day, and it is becoming a threat to Youtube.
YouTube ‘Shorts’ is Google’s answer to TikTok
Google LLC-owned YouTube is planning to launch a similar service on its platform. According to a report, the Youtube service will be called Shorts and will work just like the short-form video app TikTok.
Shorts will feature inside the existing Youtube mobile app and will include “a feed of brief videos posted by users.”
The users would be able to post videos, just like its rival platform. Shorts will have an advantage over TikTok as it will have access to YouTube’s catalogue of licensed music. However, TikTok is far behind than Youtube when we compare the number of music licensing agreements.
Due to its Chinese origin, the TikTok has seen many controversies. U.S. Senators, last year called for TikTok to be investigated by intelligence officials for “potentially harmful data collection.”
The U.S. Navy and the U.S Army also banned the use of TikTok last year amid concerns about the app’s link to China.
In April 2019, TikTok was banned in India by the Madras High Court, citing the reasons that it was spreading pornography, potentially exposing children to sexual predators, and adversely impacting its the mental health of its users. The ban, however, was lifted on April 24.
Will “Shorts” be able to counter TikTok
TikTok, with over 150 million active users, is in India expecting to touch a figure of 120 million by the end of 2020.
It would be interesting to see how Shorts from Youtube will challenge TikTok in the coming years. The lockdown due to COVID-19 Pandemic has come as a blessing in disguise for TikTok. The app has become the second most downloaded app in the world as of the end of March.
However, there is no doubt that Youtube is one of the most popular video-sharing platforms in the world.
The major challenge for Youtube will be to convince the teens and young adult TikTok users. Many of them are stars now and inspire millions of other youngsters. Therefore, they might not want to jump ship no matter how well Shorts works
