YouTube reshapes short form, long form and live video content usage

YouTube is reorganising the way it presents video content to platform users. In a new update posted yesterday, the company said: “Based on feedback, we’re beginning to roll out separate tabs for shorts, live streams, and long-form videos on all channel pages. We’ve heard that this will make it easier for viewers to discover the kinds of content they’re most interested in when exploring a creator’s channel page.”

Under the new system, “when you are watching shorts in the shorts feed and navigate to a creator’s channel from the feed, you will be directed right to this new tab to keep enjoying shorts. In the live tab, you’ll find all streams in this tab including any that are currently active, scheduled, or archived. The videos tab will continue to house long-form content. You will no longer see shorts or live streams in the videos tab.”

The new system has generated an initial positive response on social media from users. But it’s not immediately obvious how the new structure might impact on YouTube’s commercial model. Potentially, super-serving short content could make the platform more competitive against platforms like TikTok – as the battle for advertisers in this arena intensifies. At the same time, corralling live and long-form content into discrete destinations might help the platform develop a TV-style ecosystem – perhaps with the opportunity for a premium long-form offering.

The redesign follows another recent update to YouTube called ‘handles’. Available to all YouTube users, handles make it easier for YouTube creators to direct viewers to their channels. The new tab innovation comes in a relatively tough week for the platform, with quarterly ad revenues down by 1.9% year-on-year.