According to the latest report, the huge success of TikTok caught major social networks off guard. While they may not have anticipated the platform’s meteoric rise, they’re also in no rush to make their own products on the popular short-video-sharing app. While rivals Byte, Triller and Clash all have fans of their own, Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts are the most likely to challenge TikTok. YouTube just released the total views of Shorts so far, and they’re huge.
In her annual letter discussing YouTube’s priorities for the year ahead, CEO Susan Wojcicki covers a number of topics, including the state of the creator economy. It was here that she explained how YouTube Shorts performed. More people are creating content on YouTube than ever before. We’re seeing momentum across the platform, including Shorts. We have now reached 5 trillion short video views.
So while everyone is talking about TikTok and hardly anyone is talking about Shorts, Shorts has managed to amass 5 trillion views since its first soft launch in India in 2020 before expanding to the US and Other countries. While there are no comparable figures for TikTok, the platform currently has more than 1 billion monthly active users who spend an average of 52 minutes a day watching content.