YouTube rolls out TikTok rival in the US

YouTube announced Thursday that it is bringing its short-form video service to the U.S.

The service, Shorts, was launched in India in September after TikTok was banned from the country.

Shorts now draws in 6.5 billion views a day globally, YouTube said in a blog post.

“Starting today and over the next several weeks, we’ll gradually expand our Shorts beta to the U.S.,” the company said.

Shorts allows creators to make videos splicing together footage, adding audio and captioning, just like they would on TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform.

Users will be able to swipe through a catalogue of algorithmically chosen videos that will be displayed on the YouTube mobile app’s home page.

Unlike TikTok, Shorts offers little interaction between users and personal feed curation. New features may still be introduced, however.

YouTube is not the first company to try to mimic TikTok.

Instagram has its own service in the form of Reels, while Snapchat’s Spotlight has gained popularity for offering creators cash prizes.