YouTube‘s latest take on a TikTok feature is a new way to watch a stream of personalized videos. It’s called For You, and it’s slated to roll out to the general public on November 20.
The name “For You” has drawn immediate comparisons to TikTok’s For You Page, where users scroll through a never-ending feed of algorithmically-generated recommendations. YouTube’s take on the FYP will also be highly personalized. Channels that opt into the feature will display a shelf of recommended videos that will be tailored to fit the viewing habits of individual visitors. “You can choose what types of content to show and select to show only content recently posted within the last 12 months,” reads a YouTube Help post on the topic.
The For You experiment has been active since August 8, when YouTube announced that it was working with creators to test the personalized shelves. The feature received a more formal introduction on X, where YouTube advised creators to ready themselves for the public launch of For You.
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✨ introducing the “For you” section of your channel Home tab that recommends a mix of content from your channel to viewers based on their watch history
🚨 creators: review your settings & select formats before we roll out to viewers on 11/20
more: https://t.co/FNZUVWVPEA pic.twitter.com/0ga30rU1JC
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 8, 2023
YouTube discussed the development of the For You feature in a video published earlier this year on the Creator Insider channel. “You’re trying to find a configuration that is a ‘one size fits all,’ since the channel page looks the same today for every person who visits it,” YouTube Product Manager Ann Katrin Kuessner told creators. “We are building a section that will recommend content from your channel for each individual viewer.”
As seen above, the Creator Insider channel is now one of the first hubs to enable a For You shelf. The incoming feature is distinct from New To You, a personalized recommendation tool that arrived in 2021. Both updates take cues from TikTok’s For You Page, but New To You is based around viewer homepages, not creator channels.
YouTube is certainly not the only platform mimicking TikTok’s signature feed, but it has gone a long way to take pages out of its competitor’s playbook. The For You shelves are the latest example of that trend.
