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It’s hosted by our very own Joshua Cohen (that’s me) and Lauren Schnipper. Subscribe to Creator Upload on Apple Podcasts. We’re everywhere else, too. Just go to CreatorUpload.com.
If you ask Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson or Google’s Senior Director of Product Management, Todd Beaupré (who may even know more about YouTube than Donaldson 😜) any questions about the algorithm, they’ll both respond with the same answer.
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Replace the word algorithm with audience.
“Jimmy and/or Todd!! How do I make content the algorithm is going to like?” becomes a much more straightforward question when you change it to “Jimmy and/or Todd!! How do I make content my audience is going to like?” The rule of success on the platform isn’t to feed the algorithm, it’s to provide compelling content to your audience. (This still might be a hard question to answer, but it is more answerable.)
It turns out platforms need to follow the same rule.
YouTube first launched its Shorts platform in India in September 2020. It officially rolled it out in the U.S. a year later, in March 2021, before it was released worldwide in July 2021. On February 1, 2023, YouTube phased out its creator fund – which was compensating users for Shorts views – and implemented its Shorts revenue sharing program.
YouTube Shorts now sees over 50 billion views day, and creators are getting paid for their short-form content on YouTube. They’re not getting paid a lot – yet – but YouTube execs and hopeful industry professionals like to say it’s just getting started.
YouTube implemented Shorts for two main reasons:
- It needed to have an easy top-of-funnel way to get newbie creators into the YouTube ecosystem that was less production intensive than creating long-form content.
- It followed the audience.
The meteoric rise of TikTok – which now claims over 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. – crystal clearly showed audiences want short-form content. And YouTube wants to provide audiences what they want, too.
We get into following audiences and more in a fantastic interview with YouTube’s VP of the Americas Tara Walpert Levy on the latest Creator Upload podcast. Questions range from “Is Shorts cannibalizing long-form views?” to “Why is there no billboard in Times Square showing the billions YouTube has paid out to creators in real time?” to “Why the emphasis on shopping?” and everything in between. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or whenever you listen. You’re gonna dig it.
