• by Colin Kirkland , August 1, 2023

YouTube is expanding capabilities on its short-form video product, Shorts, with a slew of new features that closely resemble similar features on its competitor TikTok, including a vertical live video feed and more.

TikTok has been pushing live video as a part of its budding e-commerce offerings. Now, YouTube is rolling out previews of live videos to users’ Shorts feed in a vertical format, closely resembling TikTok’s classic display.

YouTube’s new feed allows users to watch a livestream and easily scroll through other streams. The company says creator monetization features -- paid chatting and memberships -- will also become available here, showing the desire to use live video to boost engagement and diversify revenue.

YouTube says its full-screen live videos will roll out over the coming months.

In addition, users will soon see new features for creating Shorts videos, such as tools designed to make a short video out of a horizontal YouTube clip. Users will be able to zoom and crop the original video in whatever ways they choose.

Audio features are also coming to Shorts, allowing users to take an audio clip directly from another video and use it on their own, using the same time stamp as the clip they’re replicating.

The company is also pulling from TikTok's Duet feature by providing video creators with the ability to record a video side by side with another video. YouTube is calling this feature Collab, which will include various layouts for both Shorts and longform Youtube videos.