YouTube Targets China’s TikTok with Major Changes to ‘Shorts’ Feature

Google-owned YouTube has announced major changes to its YouTube Partner Program, allowing creators to earn ad revenue on Shorts, the company’s short-form video content competitor to TikTok. The move signals a major shift by the internet giant to compete with Communist China’s powerhouse social media platform.

TechCrunch reports that many short-form video platforms have yet to figure out how to share ad revenue with creators, making it hard for creators on platforms like TikTok to make a full-time career from just their short-form content. But YouTube is making efforts to compete with TikTok, introducing major changes to its YouTube Partner Program that will allow creators to earn ad revenue from Shorts.

Shorts creators can now qualify for the YouTube Partner Program, allowing them to earn ad revenue from their YouTube content. The current Partner Program requires YouTubers to have over 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last year. Shorts creators can now join the Partner Program if they have at least 10 million views on the platform over the last 90 days. Members of the Partner Program will earn 45 percent of ad revenue generated by their videos.

YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan explained: “I’m proud to say this is the first time real revenue sharing is being offered for short-form video on any platform at scale.” Monahan is correct in this statement as while TikTok has started to experiment with ad revenue sharing, its efforts are focused more on advertisers than creators as only the top four percent of all videos on TikTok can be monetized via the TikTok Pulse program. Creators on TikTok have reportedly found it increasingly difficult to make money from TikTok’s Creator Fund.

YouTuber Kris Collins commented on the change stating: “For me, the key benefit of Shorts is that it helps me reach loads of people and pull people into my community. But my long-form content brings in a lot more revenue. So there’s been sort of a trade off. That’s why this news about the Partner Program coming to Shorts is so huge. I’ll be able to make a living from both formats.”

Read more at TechCrunch here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan