The problem that Youtube has is that they already were what TikTok is today. Early ~2005 Youtube was extremely similar to what modern TikTok is, lots of amateurs talking into their webcam and not a whole lot of professional content.
Youtube however spend a lot of effort to drive that early content away and focus on professional content that they could monetize easier. Finding a random video from somebody who isn't a professional full-time Youtuber is getting pretty rare these days.
Youtube Shorts thus has the problem that all the random slice-of-life content that strives on TikTok, is deliberately suppressed on their own platform. Difficult to see how they can fix that, as it just goes against everything they have been doing for the last decade.
The algorithm is important of course, but it needs content to search through and I just don't really think there is enough left on Youtube to compete with what TikTok is doing. All the videos I saw on Youtube Shorts was just professional Youtube's cutting some bits out of their larger videos into a shorter video, it just felt useless, annoying and uninteresting.
Youtube however spend a lot of effort to drive that early content away and focus on professional content that they could monetize easier. Finding a random video from somebody who isn't a professional full-time Youtuber is getting pretty rare these days.
Youtube Shorts thus has the problem that all the random slice-of-life content that strives on TikTok, is deliberately suppressed on their own platform. Difficult to see how they can fix that, as it just goes against everything they have been doing for the last decade.
The algorithm is important of course, but it needs content to search through and I just don't really think there is enough left on Youtube to compete with what TikTok is doing. All the videos I saw on Youtube Shorts was just professional Youtube's cutting some bits out of their larger videos into a shorter video, it just felt useless, annoying and uninteresting.