Nice way to keep users on their site!

And it also blocks users to reuse the same video content on another video sharing platform.

I am not sure though the two video options of 6 and 15 seconds are useful for all circumstances. Most product and business videos I see are between 30 seconds and a few minutes.

Looks like a quick and dirty shot at TikTok.

Will be interesting to see if (1) gets any traction (2) how soon and what filters et al get added.

It is all about keeping the content on their site (and TOS) ... :)

It is all about keeping the content on their site (and TOS)

That's what free tools on a site are for, tangor. Certainly that message has sunk in by now. Google hasn't made a secret of it.

Starbucks gives you a place to sit to keep you in their store (at least pre-pandemic they did). Lots of websites offered free calculators until that market became oversaturated. Some dealers give you free credit for six months. Others offer free shipping, hoping you'll buy something else with your savings.

Some even take the trouble to give you better researched, more creatively written content, even containing new original ideas, that will help customers through pre-purchase and over the life of your merchandise.

Take a look at the new YouTube pages. As I've posted elsewhere, they're really good, offering superb references to sites offering the technologies and craftsmanship that helped produced the videos. They seem to be experimenting with several layouts.

Pardon me for reacting so vehemently about this, but it sounds as if you feel that offering tools or extras is cheating.

I am not sure though the two video options of 6 and 15 seconds are useful for all circumstances. Most product and business videos I see are between 30 seconds and a few minutes

Lammert, I agree that those might be odd lengths, but there's been talk for years about creating short video clips that might be used in a variety of ways on YouTube. No one really picked up on that idea, so this may be a way of encouraging it.

Particularly if YouTube ever solves the problem of automating good places to insert ads into videos, and also of making video spots work with the main content, not against it, they might see a great increase in advertising and much happier users. The spots also have to be well done, and frankly most of them are not.

The bar is rising though... and there are some ads that are so good that I find myself watching the ads rather than the video I'd come to see. I have heard authoritatively that most YouTube advertisers are choosing the pre-roll ads, which give you the option of turning them off after 5 seconds or so, before the "program" video begins.

Pardon me for reacting so vehemently about this, but it sounds as if you feel that offering tools or extras is cheating.

Not at all! You just repeated everything I didn't say in "keep 'em on site". However I am a bit surprised you expressed a more sinsister conclusion!

I agree that those might be odd lengths, but there's been talk for years about creating short video clips that might be used in a variety of ways on YouTube. No one really picked up on that idea, so this may be a way of encouraging it.

Shouldn't be a surprise. Broadcast (OTA) and cable tv (and even back to radio days) has had 10 second spots for decades. Makes perfect sense for the short format to come to youtube or facebook...