YouTube shorts baffle me, in a way. "We've spent 20 years developing the perfect user interface for watching videos...now let's throw it all away and remove almost every feature so that it's more like TikTok."
Try this: "we've spent 20 years developing the perfect user interface for watching videos, and our users are abandoning it for TikTok. What to do, Product Manager?"
I dont think Youtube is losing users to Tiktok. I thnk Tiktok is growing with new potential youtuber users and youtube cant accept that and must throw everything away to capture them.
This view is myopic and wrong. YouTube doesn't need a different format, it just needs a better algorithm and a better mobile client. Making a new format is ruining what is one of the most amazing sites on the internet.