[davidjfelix]

My take: it's a mix of brand bundling and lack of data. They're roughly equivalent but shorts is bundled with youtube which has its own brand perception and reels are bundled with IG/FB and have their own brand perception. Additionally fewer users means less algorithmic data to keep viewers.

Tiktok was allowed to establish its own brand and develop a community while shorts and reels are intrinsically tied to their past. They may be able to escape that history but I don't think it's helping them be fast movers or win "cool" points.

[Majromax]

> My take: it's a mix of brand bundling and lack of data. They're roughly equivalent but shorts is bundled with youtube which has its own brand perception and reels are bundled with IG/FB and have their own brand perception. Additionally fewer users means less algorithmic data to keep viewers.

My intuition would work the other way around. I'd expect offerings from more established companies to have a big leg up in terms of usable data. Youtube should be able to use a viewer's entire watch/subscription history to inform itself about what shorts a user might like, even before they've interacted with their first short. Bytedance, on the other hand, has to start from scratch with each truly new user.

The coolness or stodginess of the company would be secondary to its effects. If boring-old-Youtube could promise shorts creators great exposure to an enthusiastic audience, it would win the platform regardless of its brand.

[PaulHoule]

I'll argue that TikTok's structure which offers you one video at a time gives you much more useful information than YouTube's interface, which looks like

https://www.threads.net/@mikeynerd/post/DB7DS7LzsVU

TikTok gets a definite thumbs up or thumbs down for every video it shows you whereas if you click on one particular sidebar video YouTube can make no conclusion about how you felt about the other videos in the sidebar. The recommendation literature talks about "negative sampling" to overcome this, I never could really believe in it, I think now it doesn't really work.

I built a system like that and found that, paradoxically, you have to make it blend in a good amount of content that it doesn't think you'd like for it to be able to calibrate itself.

[trogdor]

> If boring-old-Youtube could promise shorts creators great exposure to an enthusiastic audience, it would win the platform regardless of its brand.

Just a guess, as someone who makes their living from YouTube: YouTube creators are driven to create content that earns them money. As compared to long-form content, YouTube shorts earn next-to-nothing, and it’s not clear that they drive significant new traffic to more-valuable content.

Most large creators on YouTube are focused on the bottom line, not exposure.