YouTube today began rolling out a new experimental feature that appears to be a shot at TikTok.
The latest YouTube experiment allows you to record 15-second clips on your phone and then easily upload them to YouTube as a single video. Spotted by TechCrunch, this feature is rolling out to a small group of users on Android and iOS.
If you're part of the experiment, you'll see a "Create a video" option in the mobile upload flow. You can tap this button to begin recording then tap again to stop. You can repeat those steps until you end up with a video that's 15 seconds. YouTube will then combine the clips and then upload them as a single video.
This experiment also means that you'll no longer be able to record longer video from inside the YouTube app. You can still upload longer videos to YouTube from your phone by uploading from your device's gallery.
TikTok has become a popular service for short, rehearsed looping videos, and this new experiment could be a way for YouTube to try creating its own version of TikTok. YouTube is the most popular video service around for longer videos, and so it wouldn't be a surprise for YouTube to want its own slice of the TikTok-style audience, too. We heard a couple months ago that YouTube was working on a TikTok rival called "Shorts", and so this new experiment may be a part of that effort.
