In a bid to take the fight against TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, YouTube is coming up with its short-form replayable functionality. The video streaming service will now highlight the ‘most replayed’ parts of the videos, which the users can directly skip to and avoid the rest of the content. 

The feature, which was available on a trial basis for YouTube Premium subscribers, will let you identify and highlight the most popular parts of a video with the help of a graph which appears behind the progress bar. 

According to YouTube, “If the graph is high, then that part of the video has been replayed often. You can use the graph to quickly find and watch those moments.” And yes, it will be rolled out to non-YouTube Premium subscribers as well. 

In theory, the new feature seems to be a win-win for both the consumers and creators, with the latter being able to identify what exactly their user base wants to see. If implemented correctly, we could see a new wave of content creation ideas popping up on our feed. 

This yet-to-be-named feature is bundled with the package the video hosting website seeks to implement, some of which have already made their way to the users. For instance, creators can now splice up their videos and split them into different “chapters” based according to timestamps. 

But what’s more interesting here is YouTube’s interest in short-form videos. The website which served itself as a home for long-form content and even rewarded its creators to extend their video length seems to want to go in the opposite direction. 

If we were to look at the numbers, YouTube still dominates the monthly active user space, with around 225.8 million viewers compared to Facebook’s 179.1 million. However, according to a report by eMarketer, TikTok is steadily catching up. 

The website estimates, that around 87.6 per ent of US teens will use YouTube monthly this year, while 65.3 per cent will prefer TikTok. A few years down the line (2025), it is forecasted that US TikTok user group (from 18 to 24) might climb up to 24.2 million, while YouTube might go up to 26.6 million users. It is a real possibility that the former may take over the latter in the coming decade or so. 

(Image credits: YouTube, Google, Getty Images)