How YouTube Shorts Picks Winners — With Todd Sherman

Todd Sherman is the product lead for YouTube Shorts. He's also a former group product manager at Twitter and Snap. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion about YouTube's plans for Shorts, how the product works, and how it plans to compete with TikTok. We start with a discussion about whether Twitter bringing back Vine could work. YouTube Shorts are now available on YouTube's TV app, which Sherman discusses as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. There is a lot going on in the social media world in particular. Obviously Elon Musk is running amok inside Twitter. Snapchat is still trying to find its way on the revenue side, though its product's doing well. And of course, the most fascinating battle is probably between TikTok and YouTube and Instagram when it comes to these short-form videos that everybody seems to be interested in building into their product. Today, we have like the perfect person to speak to all three of these issues. Todd Sherman is the Director of Product Management at YouTube. I'm going to introduce him or welcome to the show in just a moment.

• 1:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  But first, just at the top, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and are interested in giving us a rating, they really go a long way in helping us get discovered. So five stars on either of those platforms would be particularly helpful. I want to say thank you to everybody who's rated. And with that being said, Todd, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. Really great to be here with you. Great to have you here. So you were the product manager or director of product management at Twitter, responsible for a very interesting product, tweets. And you know, tweets you would think are not really changed over time, but they did change. You know, they included GIFs and stickers and polls. Quote tweets is a very interesting one. And then obviously longer tweets, which was

• 2:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  something that you worked on while you were there. Big question at the start, while you were at Twitter, did you anticipate it going in this direction?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  You know, I had, I had worked at Twitter from 2014 for onward, like for a couple of years, two and a half years or so. And, you know, I joined at a time like after they went public. And there were a lot of senior leaders coming in from across the industry that loved Twitter and wanted to help build the future of it. So even when I was there, it was a very dynamic time. And in my time there, Jack sort of came back as CEO. And so when I look back to my time at Twitter and then think about everything since then, it seems like it's always been a pretty dynamic place. So, you know, your question sort of around like, have I, you know, is it like

• 3:34Speaker 02

  sort of what I expected? I think that you kind of, you know, having been at Twitter, I think a lot of people have sort of come to expect Twitter to kind of always be at the center of the discussion. And it seems like that's proven true over, over the last several years as well.

• 3:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. All right. Let's move on. So Twitter is also talking about bringing back Vine. I guess it was Vine was around when you were there. Is that right?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  It was, yeah.

• 4:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think about the idea? I mean, did it, do you think they, we're going to get into YouTube stuff in a minute, but do you think they missed this? You know, there's a famous meme that, you know, Twitter could have been the original TikTok. Do you think they missed that moment? And, and do you think that they can get back in the game by sort of like resuscitating Vine?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  You know, short form video has had a really interesting history. And I think in many regards, it all started with Vine. And when I think about modern short form video now with, you know, TikTok, shorts and reels, and then you ask sort of how you got here. You know, Vine certainly kicked things off. You know, just to recap like what Vine was for those maybe that weren't very close to it. You know, you had this feed of lots of very short videos, oftentimes like six seconds long. And you sort of, they're square and you scrolled through them and a lot of it was comedy. A lot of creative people poured a lot of energy into making fantastic videos. It wasn't powered really by machine learning recommendations. And, you know, the camera was quite innovative because as you press your finger on the screen,

• 5:07Speaker 02

  you could record a segment of video and then you could take your finger off and like record more. So it had like these really mobile native video creation tools. But it was really just the start. If you look at like what happened after Vine, there was a small friendship that most people haven't heard of called Mindy. They added music in the creation process. I actually remember when I had my first kid in the hospital room, I wanted to kind of make a Vine. And I was playing like the, like the soundtrack for Lion King when they were like, they were like showing like, oh, this is going to be yours. And I like held my baby up and had my wife take a video of it. But I had to like play that music from some other source. So Mindy added music during the creation process, that sync recording. And then it also made it fullscreen. And so you could see how like they kind of moved it forward.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  And then musically, they, they added some things too, right? They added vertical video actions in the player. So you could easily like like something or share. And they also added these pivots where you could see more videos that use the same song, which really spurred a lot of trends. And so I think what's interesting about short form video is that there's been a lot of changes across many apps and many years that eventually led to what we see in like the modern offerings. And so. You know, when Douyin came about in China, which is, you know, the TikTok of China, it was really at a time when machine learning recommendations came into their own and really started, they really focused it on short form video.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  And I think that's what allowed it to become sort of much more mainstream when TikTok, when ByteDance acquired Musically and then brought TikTok to scale outside of China. And so when I think back to Vine and to your question, I think that there is a lot of nostalgia that I have for Vine. I loved Vine, spent a lot of time on Vine. And if they're talking about bringing it back, you know, I guess the question would be, does that mean you're bringing back the name? Or are you bringing back the exact product? Because a lot has changed since those earlier times. And so I'm not sure exactly what their plans are, but I do love Vine.

• 7:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it is interesting, there was this moment where lots of creators went to Vine and said, listen, we are the ones that are making this app worth downloading, and we want a cut of the revenue. And Twitter never cut them in. And they kind of went to your second employer, which was Snapchat, and started creating on stories, and they created on YouTube instead. And that's, that's the real, the real story of what happened to Vine. I think it wasn't exactly the format. It was the fact that all these creators decided that they weren't getting a piece of the action. They were delivering all the value and they just wanted out.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I don't know if it was clear at the time about what it could mean to build a truly sustainable ecosystem. In retrospect, often things become clear. But, you know, when I think about what we're doing with shorts, for example, you know, when you think about an ecosystem, you generally want all the participants to feel like it's worth continuing to stay active, right? And so for, for shorts, you know, we have creators that are pouring their time and energy and passion to making videos. You have viewers that want to watch videos, be entertained, be interested in videos. And you have advertisers that they have their own goals, right? They want to further their advertising goals. And so, you know, thinking back to what YouTube did for long form video,

• 8:25Speaker 02

  we're trying to do something similar here where we align the incentives between. You know, creators, advertisers and viewers in order to build a self sustaining ecosystem. I don't think it's as clear that that was, that could happen in that same way back in the days of Von.

• 8:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe if you were standing there at the ground, you know, there might be some excuse to be made. But looking back, it's absolutely what happened. So let's, let's move on to YouTube. Just thinking about the way that, that shorts came about.

• 8:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  From my perspective on the outside, it seems like, you know, Tik Tok, we, we had, um, we had an episode back, uh, you know, about Tik Tok about a year ago, talking about, um, who Tik Tok's biggest competitor was. And I thought, okay, maybe it's Facebook, uh, but I guess I actually said YouTube. And I'm curious, like, what, what's the, the story that I imagine in my head in terms of when YouTube decided to get into shorts is that it sees Tik Tok being this, this very quick growing, uh, video watching site. Good people who created were interested in it. People who were watching loved it. It was based off of, used a good algorithmic recommendations, which YouTube was getting into.

• 9:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it became sort of a, we need to get a version of this product inside YouTube, or we could lose a lot of ground to Tik Tok right away. So, so what is the real story inside YouTube in terms of how that actually happened? Or maybe that is.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. So I think that, um, even before Tik Tok was a household name and before Musically was acquired, we were interested in short form video. And I think that there, you know, if, if you look through that sort of narrative of these different apps, kind of increasingly maturing and meeting user needs. And you were kind of observing that, like, you know, I was observing that because, you know, I was at Twitter when we had Von and I, you, I was active on, you know, Mindy and Musically and these other, and Dubsmash and all these other apps. And so if you're like, kind of using those apps over time, you can get a sense that it's like maturing to the point where it's like increasingly meeting users' needs. And I think there's really two parts to that, right?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  There's like creator needs, like making it easy for me to make videos and get an audience. And then there's viewer needs of like seeing things I'm interested in, uh, videos I value, right? And so as I was involved in that over time, I sort of got the sense that this was increasingly approaching a point where it could become mainstream. Up until that point, it was quite niche, right? And so after I joined, um, YouTube almost five years and now of five years ago now, I was sort of interested in. What short form video could be like inside of YouTube? And so, you know, we started running some experiments where we took short form videos that were already uploaded to YouTube because of course lots of videos of all lengths are uploaded to YouTube, although most of the ones that people saw at the time were, you know, 10 and 20 minutes long.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  We started taking those and experimenting with them to see if people would enjoy them. And, you know, early on, we got a signal that the answer was yes, but we also got a sort of understanding of how recommending short form video is just so different from long form video. So, you know, we started running those experiments and convincing ourselves that this was worth an area like worth investing in because we were able to see how people were engaging with it. And then, you know, we continued to scale that. And then, you know, TikTok sort of became much more prominent in the world. And I think that only kind of served to validate that there was really like latent demand for this in the world. And we continued to kind of double down on investing in it and really seeking to grow an ecosystem.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  We took a very like iterative approach, if you will, starting by like, you know, just the consumption experience and then we built the creation tools and we've continued to invest in all aspects of the product since then.

• 12:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  You mentioned that it's different to recommend a short form video versus a long form. Talk a little bit about that. What was the difference?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I think that if you, if you think about somebody that's really engaged with YouTube, maybe they're watching, you know, 10, maybe 12, maybe 15 videos that are 10 or 20 minutes long. This is an awful lot of time that they're spending enjoying content on YouTube. And when you think about that amount of time and then you think about watching short form videos, you just watch so many more videos, right? And, you know, to be able to serve users' desire to be entertained or educated or catch up on some, something new or discover something new.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  There's sort of a extra onus on making sure that that feed is diverse, for example, right? Like, maybe some people want a very diverse feed that has lots of different types of content. Maybe users want to see content from creators they know, but maybe they also want to discover new things that they didn't even know that they wanted, right? So you sort of have objectives around helping people discover new things and probe their interests. Like, maybe you didn't even know you were interested in beekeeping, but if we can find a video that we think is good and put that in front of you in your feed, then we can help you discover that and connect with that content and broaden your interest. And so you think about how quickly we need to incorporate your feedback signals, whether they're negative

• 13:37Speaker 02

  or positive, into subsequent recommendations. All of this is sort of like, almost like the feed level perspective. And so in some regards, like, you know, short-form video is much more about a feed. You know, creators are still obviously at the center of it, but being able to construct a feed that really aligns with what you're interested in or what you might be interested in is very central to being successful with short-form video. And so some of those things are a bit different than recommending, you know, 10 or 15 long-form videos compared to hundreds of short-form videos. Does that make sense?

• 14:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, definitely. So when I, I mean, I'm creating on these platforms also. We use it to promote big technology podcasts, shorts, Instagram reels, and TikTok. And obviously, I like watching them. So, and sort of millions and millions of other people, billions of people, apparently, maybe. And one of the things that I'm always curious about is, is this, the platforms pushing the demand? Because you put a post, a video up on any of them, and it just explodes. And so I'm always curious, like, whether this is platforms pushing the demand, users just being, you know, kind of addicted to it, or something in the middle. Where do you think this, is this just massive amount

• 14:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  of interest? Is it platform pushed, or is it organic? Like, talk a little bit about why people are so interested in these videos.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I can only speak to what we do. And, you know, for us, it's never really about pushing the content to people in a way that's forced, because ultimately, that wouldn't be healthy for users. Like, they would be unhappy with the content, and then they would use YouTube less.

• 15:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course. But you do make, you make design choices. You decide, you decide, we want to put reels here or there, you know? So that, that is-

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, I think in a lot of regards, like, the two, like, there's maybe like, three main ways people get into shorts, right? So when you open YouTube, there's-

• 15:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Forgive me.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  When you open YouTube, there is the sort of like homepage there, right? And there's a bunch of longer form videos, and there's also a short shelf. We show you that shelf when we have a good signal that you're interested in some content. And like, where that shelf appears in the feed is the result of ranking it in the feed. And the videos that are in that shelf is also the result of recommendations. And so we show that to you when we believe you're going to want to engage with it. And there's also a shorts tab where you can just tap on it and just start watching video immediately. You don't sort of browse the shelf, you just kind of jump in. And then that shelf that's on home also exists on, like, the watch pages for YouTube videos. Because below those videos is a feed of recommendations.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And then when we think that you're going to be interested in shorts, we, we, we recommend it there. So we don't want to waste that space, right? Whereas YouTube in general, we don't want to put things there that people don't want. Because if we did that, we're just sort of wasting real estate, so to speak. We'd rather put things there that users find engaging. And so there's really not a push. I think more than anything, the way I think about it is making space for short form video. And all indications are there, there is a lot of demand for it on the platform. And so, you know, users decide to engage with it when they feel like there's something for them there. So it's really not a push.

• 16:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So if it's not the platform, what do you think makes this so, these videos so damn appealing to people?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Well, I think that the nature of the feed is quite interesting because when videos become short, browsing them is watching them, right? So it's very much so like rapid fire teleporting from one topic to another or one creator to another. And so that can be quite entertaining because and engaging because it's on one hand, when you get something you like, you can dwell on it and enjoy it. And then as you're flipping through it, it's relatively, it doesn't feel so bad if there's a video that you don't enjoy because it's very interactive and you could just switch to the next one. So that high level of interactivity and reactiveness of the feed makes it so that, you know, what

• 17:49Speaker 02

  you enjoy, you'll oftentimes get exposed to new things and get more of what you enjoy and see less of what you don't want. And so I think the opportunity, because the videos are short, the opportunity is that that feed can be very reactive to your interest. And we certainly aim to make it a feed that is really aligned with, you know, not only delighting you, but sometimes surprising you with new content. You mentioned the point about addictiveness, like we certainly don't ever want that to be the case. What we try and do is measure whether or not people are satisfied with the content, not just that they're watching it, but that they actually felt satisfied with it.

• 18:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  How do you measure that?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, we run surveys and we ask you like, hey, did you like this video? And we ask you to rate it like on a scale of one to five, where one is you didn't like it and five is that you did, because there could be scenarios where you're sort of engaging, but you didn't enjoy the content, in which case you would not be satisfied. Perhaps you see something that you disagree with and you're angry about, but you watched it anyway, as an example. So we really think about that valued watch time. And then we also have controls built into the YouTube app, like take a break reminders that, that at the YouTube app level, sort of like shorts fall under that engagement.

• 18:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  How long does someone have to?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  You go ahead.

• 19:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  How long does someone have to watch before getting that take a break reminder?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I'd have to double check, but I think it's able, I think you're able to configure it. And there's also like bedtime reminders too, to like interrupt you, right? Cause sometimes you might just be actually enjoying it and actually satisfied, but.

• 19:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you have to be, I think you have to be extremely heavy of a user to get any of these notifications or surveys even. Because I mean, just, I mean, obviously like, I'm not going to extrapolate my personal experience to every single person's experience on YouTube. But I watched a lot of these shorts, never gotten a notification that I should step away. And definitely haven't gotten a survey about whether the video was high quality. So it must be that there, I mean, maybe I did and just forgot it, but it must be that these go to like smaller subsets of users.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we want to be cautious about triggering too many surveys. And so not everybody gets them all the time, but we also try and leverage that data in order to kind of extrapolate. And even try and like, understand what people might rate as one star or five star, right? So like the data, the survey data is kind of like also input for additional work around kind of accounting for if we think people would have valued that, that, that watch time or not.

• 20:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, on one hand, like you can, you have television channels that are putting out shows that, you know, are not going to leave people feeling all that good, but they just binge them anyway. So maybe it's holding, you know, this stuff up to a different standard, but it does feel like the shorter videos are just way more addictive than sitting down with a series.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. I think that there is, you know, there is a narrative that I think is prevalent out there. On the other hand, when you're watching a long video or even a longer, like a movie, for example, like you might feel like you gotta see it through. Where on short form video, you have lots of natural breaks. And so I'm not actually sure where it ends, but I just looked up right now, related to take a break reminder. If you find, if you find you're watching too much, you can go into the settings and you can configure that to whatever time you want. There's like some sliders in there, so I wouldn't encourage you to watch less short form video unless you felt like you're watching too much. But it's under your control.

• 21:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  What percent of users actually know that that control exists and go and use it?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. I don't have that data off the top of my head, unfortunately.

• 21:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm glad you shared about it. I had no idea that was there. So, speaking of, you know, talking about longer form series, a lot of times people, you know, sit back and watch them on their couch in the living room. And now you guys are taking shorts and bringing them to the living room and you can watch them on your TV now. So at first, when I heard about this, I was like, okay, seems like fairly unnatural place to use to use them. Like the shorts and TikToks and reels seem to be, you know, much better for your phone where you're just there scrolling through. Maybe you can use a remote for the same behavior. But obviously, the YouTube app is pretty popular on smart TVs. So what was the thinking behind that?

• 22:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what makes you convinced that the format is right there?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. You know, I think in general, great content, even if it's more native to one sort of device, sort of shouldn't be trapped to that device. And so when I think about the living room experience, it's one of the fastest growing sort of screens at YouTube. And shorts is another fast growing area. And so for me, I'm really excited about bringing shorts to the living room experience. Of course, there is a very sort of personal sort of consumption experience when you're holding a phone in your hand and flipping through short form video, where when you think about the living room, it's basically built around multiple people watching that device.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  And so I think that there are some interesting dynamics there that may inform the experience as it matures over time. But I think the overall motivation here is that like the creators are investing a lot in shorts to make great content. And that content really should be able to be watched anywhere YouTube videos are watched. And the living room is just such an important and growing platform that really motivated us to extend a short form video viewing experience to the living room experience.

• 23:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Todd Sherman is with us. He's the Director of Product Management for Shorts at YouTube, also former Twitter and Snapchat. We'll talk a little bit about Snapchat when we come back after the break and a little bit more about Shorts for the Living Room and YouTube in general. Back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended

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• 25:40Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 25:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the second half of Big Technology Podcast. Todd Sherman is with us, Director of Product Management at YouTube. Todd, what was you were also you're you have this very interesting, I mean, background, because you were the person who was basically responsible for really core formats at three important, you know, new social media companies. I don't know if you considered YouTube social media. Maybe that's another conversation, but Twitter, you did the tweets. YouTube, you're doing shorts, Snapchat, you did stories. What was it like running stories at Snapchat? And it's kind of interesting, because, you know, you were at a place that had its format copied by others when you were at Snapchat. Now you're at YouTube, where you're actually working to, I don't know.

• 26:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know you said you guys experimented with with short form before TikTok, but it does look like, you know, shorts is some some form of TikTok clone. So what does it feel like being on on both sides of the action on that type of thing?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I think innovation happens in a lot of different ways. When I think to Snapchat, you know, I was not part of the original team that pioneered stories there. I had the good fortune of being able to work on parts of it, including tools for Discover Publishers, which is sort of like not friend stories and working on the Discover page as well. So when I think about stories, though, like really the format of stories, part of the reason I wanted to work at Snapchat is because I felt like there was a ton of really first principles thinking going on there. And the status update, so to speak, kind of really became native to the phone, the phone that has a camera in it, right?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  So when when we say stories, like, we're talking about like a slideshow of media, photos and videos, right? There's an ephemerality window on it. After 24 hours, it falls away and the viewer taps through it to kind of control the scrubber and the experience, right? And so like, stories is just such an innovative format. And I think it really was a departure from The sort of way that status updates worked before that, which was like a smooth scrolling feed of all these different content types, you know, including text and photos of different shapes and maybe a video every once in a while, or even articles, et cetera. But it was really focused on close friends being able to update each other. And that type of innovation was

• 28:15Speaker 02

  really centered at Snapchat. When I compare that and really contrast that with short form video, like we were talking about earlier, it's really kind of the result of many layers of innovation that started with Vine and then many apps over many years kind of like took what worked and then built on top of it and improved it until it eventually became mainstream. So I sort of try and take the sort of like strategic perspective of where things came from, what problems are they solving for users and what ought to be carried forward and embraced? And then where is there opportunities to kind of build new and innovative things to meet the next user needs? So, you know, innovation does happen in lots of different ways.

• 28:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, well, that's interesting. It's sort of what you now sound like what the Facebook people said when they copied stories. But anyway, you know, it's always

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Well, I do think that I don't think that stories was, it's not the same as, as like, like how TikTok got where it was. TikTok is the latest layer of many layers where I think stories was more singularly invented, kind of like at Snapchat, instead of like a layering across many companies in many years. So I think they're different in that regards.

• 29:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Speaking about the platforms, do you spend time posting and watching on all three platforms? On, let's see, on Shorts, TikTok and Reels? And if you do, what do you think the differences are between them?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I absolutely do. Across multiple accounts, really. I think that

• 29:47Speaker 02

  There is a lot of differences, you know. TikTok, for example, has its roots in musically in trends. And I think that when you look at a lot of the top TikTok creators and you filter out people that are famous for other reasons other than being on TikTok, that you find a lot of people that are those that participate in those trends have grown large audiences. And so, you know, just for your listeners, when I talk about trends, what I'm talking about is sort of sets of videos that you experience space throughout the feed as you're swiping through it. And, you know, they tend to share like the same song or media

• 30:29Speaker 02

  and the same concept and people kind of replicate or riff on that concept in order to join on the trend. And maybe the trend lasts, you know, a week or two. And some of them could get quite big. Even if you're not active on these platforms, you probably remember Old Town Road. Like, that was like a really big trend that many, many people participated in. So, you know, trends are really prominent part of TikTok. And it's also something that we're interested in, but it's really like their roots are really in it. I think that

• 31:00Speaker 02

  the ability to get an audience on the platform is something that is also very, very important. And so how quickly you're able to get that initial audience or perhaps even go viral, like TikTok has been working at that for many years. And that's also of course an area that we've been investing in. You know, no one likes to shot within into the void. So in shorts, we've even, we've been focused on making sure that we can get people an audience, the audience that deserve as quickly as possible. So, you know, I think there's been a lot of innovations over, over the years. And when you think about why those things matter, you know, it really all comes down to like aligning what the users need. And in this case, I'm giving you some examples around creators

• 31:42Speaker 02

  being inspired with trends to participate or getting an audience. And those are new areas that I think historically the creators desire to be creative and get an audience weren't met in that same way previously. And so those are new innovative areas that we're, we're interested in. And I think that's one. That's one thing that I would point out that TikTok does quite well.

• 32:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ron Janroy was on a couple of weeks ago and he mentioned that, what did he say? He said that his theory is that these platforms give you a ton of distribution early on to sort of get you hooked on posting. Can you confirm or deny that?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  I have no idea what TikTok does exactly in their algorithm at scale. We don't try and trick people, if that's what you're asking.

• 32:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, he's asking, but you did say you want to get people an audience early. So yeah, the question is, you know, is there a, anything in the algorithm that, that juices the early reach so that people can build that audience early?

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Now, the, I think the simple answer is no. I think the more nuanced answer is, is that, you know, when somebody starts a new account, we often don't know much about them. They don't have a lot of history, for example. They've not posted a lot of videos before. And so when you create, when somebody creates that first video, we really try and understand what we can about the video through, you know, technology, like what is this video about? What, perhaps what are they talking about? Or did they use a song? Or are there things that we can understand about the video even before anybody engages with it? And that's one way through that understanding that we might be able to get it in front of people that enjoy content for which we believe that they may have some affinity for.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  So you kind of are getting the video a seed audience in order to gather signals about it. And then those signals that viewers, you know, like how much they engage with it, that they like it, share it, comment, like all the things you can do with the video, those kind of inform our ability to get it more audience. Or the signals we may get is that this video is actually not likely to be enjoyed by that many people. So really what we're trying to do is, when I say get each video the audience deserves as quickly as possible, we're, we're trying to really, you know, get each video, like, get each creator on the biggest stage that, that, that they can kind of like deserve to get on, right? It's really up to the viewers, but we're putting an extra emphasis on figuring out.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  How much more audience any particular video deserves? Does that make sense?

• 34:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's an interesting thing that I've noticed with TikTok and YouTube is that it's almost like distribution is a bit of a step function where the platforms will seed out the videos to a certain number of users, wait to see how they react. If you earn the right to be seen by more people, then it jumps up again. And even my agency says there's this belief that there's like these sort of brackets that you fall in, like a couple hundred views. And then maybe if you do well there, you get to a thousand. If you do well there, you get to 10,000. Is that right?

• 34:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, not the specific numbers, but it does seem like that's what you're describing, where there's this end of step function I see in the analytics in terms of the way that things are distributed.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think conceptually it's roughly right.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  We don't really want to have step functions per se, but it's absolutely true that we'll, we don't send it out to everybody on the platform. We sort of send it out to a portion of people, a small portion of people, especially when we don't know that much. You know, I think that there's an analogy here, perhaps like in the, in the physical world, like, let's say that you were great with singing and a guitar, right? Like at first you, who do you start with? You like, maybe go to like your community center or perhaps like a local bar or something like this. And it's like a relatively small audience. And then if you get traction there, that opens up opportunities to do more and bigger things, right? And so like kind of proving yourself along the way is generally how, how it works to build an audience.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  You don't sort of open for a stadium full of people on your first gig, you know?

• 35:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it's fascinating how that, that dynamic exists for each video that people post.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  I think it does, but also the sort of history of that creator also matters, right? Like if you have a track record of driving lots of audience, that absolutely influences what could be for the next one, right?

• 36:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  You could also like, it's also interesting because, you know, you talk about this career progression and this really is a good parallel because, you know, you can go from that person playing the local music hall to someone playing Madison Square Garden in one night on YouTube. Pretty interesting.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that we absolutely want people to get the audience they deserve. And sometimes that might mean getting a big audience quickly. And we also want to.

• 36:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, sure. It's happened to me like we did. Well, I just, this is the reason why I decided to invest a little bit more in shorts is because like the first video I posted just to see, I knew we were going to talk. I just wanted to see what it was like a couple of months ago. And it went from, you know, zero to a hundred to a thousand to thirty two thousand.

• 36:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  It within a day. I mean, that's going from literally your local music hall to something bigger than MSG overnight.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which is wild. And this happens on Tik Tok too. This whole step function thing is we see the same exact thing with Tik Tok. We don't see it with reels. Reels is very interesting. And maybe this is because I created a new account, but what reels like you can post and unless you have, you know, it's still so much based off of a follow model versus algorithm, which I think is a real liability. Because, you know, I imagine you guys are considering, this means you guys are considering all videos on YouTube for potentially explosive distribution. You know, whereas like there's their universe is much smaller.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I think that like there's like an underlying interesting user desire here, which is, you know, putting yourself out on stage and sort of knowing that that stage could like almost under your feet grow to be very large. So it's almost like you feel like you're kind of the excitement of maybe like buying a lot of a ticket or something. Or you're kind of.

• 38:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great way to describe it.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, I think that that's, you know, that's an interesting part of it. There's also the flip side of it, which is that continued effort of making good videos ought to pay off, you know, as they connect with viewers. But then there's the the flip side of it, which is like it kind of like the lotto ticket mentality. And I think both of those kind of tap into people's desire to express themselves and get an audience.

• 38:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we tend to know like within like the first couple of hours, whether this video is going to explode or whether this video is is basically dead from the start. And there's, there's an interesting, there's certainty there.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're always working to kind of like close that loop quicker because. You know, we'd rather not wait many, many days, for example, before giving you a signal of what works and what doesn't.

• 38:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  There's something important, I think, about making that feedback loop tight. So we're always working to responsibly make that faster.

• 38:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, totally. And old school YouTube, it actually seems to be a much more linear progression. Is there like something like, I guess this goes back to our question at the beginning about what it takes to recommend something, or maybe the way the product works. And maybe because you've watched less YouTube, less of the old school YouTube videos than you would of shorts, because so it takes more time to go through that process.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're pointing out something that is important, which is like internally, we refer to it as exploration, which is, you know, when we're getting all of these videos to seed audience, we're like, we're bringing them into people's feeds and we're, we're not doing that randomly. We're trying to get some signal that you might like this video, but we also don't know as much about it as we would prefer. And so because people are flipping through dozens or hundreds of videos, it's, it's actually pretty reasonable for us to insert some of those videos that we don't know as much about that we would prefer and explore them in that feed. And because so many people are flipping through videos, you have a pretty good ability to explore lots of videos and figure out which ones are the best.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  So it's kind of like a big, a big exploration challenge around figuring out which videos deserve more audience and then continuing to get them more audience as quickly and as responsibly as possible.

• 40:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I know you probably can't answer this, but I'm going to ask you anyway. What percentage of video views are shorts making up on YouTube now compared to longer form videos?

• 40:21Speaker 02

  I wish I can answer that. The public numbers that we have released, by the way, like the way these numbers get released is because they like appear in like earnings reports and publicly that they go through like a claims process where we have our analysts like really sort of hammer on them and make sure that there's rigor behind being able to publicly disclose them. So the company is generally, I think people would understand like pretty choosy about which numbers they release. So I can't answer what percentage it is, but the latest stat we put out was 30 billion views a day. And that number was released back in April.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  And Shorts continues to scale and it's really a non-trivial amount of views on YouTube overall. It's significant.

• 41:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  30 billion views a day and I think the last number was maybe 15 billion, so it had doubled in some timeframe.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't remember exactly. I'll do a quick search.

• 41:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Anyway, I'm just gonna get to the next question, which is that as Shorts start to take up this much of the platform, it's obviously the way to run advertising is much more nascent. And so they're harder to make money off of, at least that's the conventional wisdom. And just looking at YouTube's most recent earnings report, which came out a couple of weeks ago. So YouTube's advertising dropped, this is from CNBC, dropped 2% year-over-year to 7.07 billion during the third quarter, below 7.42 billion. It was the first time YouTube's ad revenue had ever contracted since it started being broken out in 2019.

• 41:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  So is that a function of Shorts taking up that much more time on the platform and YouTube trying to figure out a way to make money off of those videos?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  You know, as you might expect, I don't have any guidance beyond what Alphabet's leadership gives in earnings calls. But what I'll share where this is kind of interesting is that each time there's a new video format, like even just think about long-form YouTube, the business model that surrounded it kind of had to be rethought compared to television, which was the predominant consumption model before, right? And so television works a certain way with commercial breaks. YouTube, long-form, works a certain way with like pre-roll. We call it like ads that run before the video or mid-roll, which happens in between the video, similar to this podcast. And that's a certain business model that has a rev share around it. And then, once again, short form is really, it's a different format and requires, I think, a fresh look at what it means to build a sustainable business model.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  So Shorts is focused on inserting ads in the feed. We always want to get better at that, you know, giving people an ad that they find valuable at the right time. And so it's earlier. I think the simple answer is that it's earlier and the team is really excited about. Not only maturing our ability to monetize shorts, but also share that revenue with creators, which really makes, which really should make it a much more sustainable sort of ecosystem.

• 43:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let me ask you a question that, that, you know, is not going to, hopefully not going to get you in trouble with the SEC. In terms of the, you know, maturity of getting these shorts advertising units in there, right? In terms of like how far this monetization movement is, are you at the early, be early side of it? Are you the middle? Do you feel like you're pretty, you got it pretty set? Like, where is YouTube on that?

• 43:43Speaker 02

  In terms of just effectively monetizing short form video?

• 43:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Well, we just announced the rev share with creators, so.

• 43:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I want to ask about that next, but in terms of your ad, you know, the maturity of your ad product now.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just mean in terms of calendar time, I guess shorts is relatively young and, and working to monetize it is even younger. So, you know, when, when, when people ask me about shorts overall, it feels like we're still in the earlier stages. I know it seems like everybody's talking about shorts and YouTube. And so just by virtue of shorts being such a young and early product, I think that it's safe to say that it overall is earlier stages.

• 44:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. You can't say it, but I will. I think that looking at the most recent numbers, it does seem like people who are saying this is the end of YouTube ad revenue, you know, might be misreading, I think, what is probably the key point here, which is that shorts is early on. Let's go to the last thing I want to talk to you about. We talked a little bit about Vine and the creators. YouTube is working to get creators in on the action. So I'm kind of curious to hear your perspective on the rev share with creators, which I think is relatively new, that you're going to rev share with almost all creators and including rev share on, on reels when it comes to that. And another thing is, you know, as you answered, there's one thing I wanted you to keep in mind, which is that any, a lot of people who have tried to turn on advertising on YouTube unless

• 45:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  they're massive creators, end up getting like 10 cents, you know, for a month's worth of views. And is that going to, you know, is that, will that persist?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  I'm really excited about a rev share for shorts. It is a different business model than ads tied to specific videos. And a rev share based on that, it's more about kind of aligning with the fundamentals and strengths of the short form video feed. So how it's going to work is creators that get into the that are eligible for the YouTube Partner Program. We call that YPP for short. You know, after they've met that criteria, the amount of views that they generate will basically earn them a percentage of the revenue that is generated from the advertisements inserted into the feed, even if that ad wasn't next to their video.

• 45:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Even if they don't use, like, they could even use music and it doesn't affect it. So it's really a new sort of like feed based revenue sharing model for creators. And there are criteria to get into the YPP, the YouTube Partner Program.

• 46:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, what is it? A thousand subscribers and some, some number of hours per month in the last 30 days that people have generated.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  For shorts, it's about, it's based on views. I'm looking for the very latest. I think it's 10 million views over 90 days and a thousand subs. I'll have to double check those, those numbers. And, and then there's a 45% rev share there. So it's going to be interesting to see how it works. I think how it works out the gate will be interesting, but also as the ecosystem, as the ecosystem matures and creators continue to invest, I think it'll sort of evolve as we, we try and align those incentives and make sure that creators making great videos that drive lots of audience get rewarded for that.

• 47:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  For creators, this could be really great because, you know, it used to be, we started, the internet began with user generated content. And there was never an expectation that you would get, really get paid for what you were generating as a user. But now you have shorts, you have TikTok, you have reels all competing for the best creators. It's a good time to be sitting in the middle and, and, you know, being a person that, if you are a person that can create quality video, sort of stand a chance to get paid. Because that really is sort of what you're competing against with TikTok and reels, right? It's the quality of content within the algorithm. What do you think?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  I think that the algorithm is very important to help people get videos they want to, you know, there's many aspects of it. There's many aspects of the algorithm to help inspire creators or get them an audience. So the algorithm is like probably one of the most important aspects of making sure that you can grow that ecosystem overall. But the ecosystem, I think, is most sustainable when passionate people are rewarded for their contributions, which is why, you know, it's so, I think, exciting to have short form video inside of YouTube because YouTube, you know, before creator economy was a buzzword, YouTube was sharing revenue with creators, really from those early stages. It's really what made YouTube what it is.

• 48:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's how you got those Vine, you got those Vine people because they're like, oh, we can go make money there.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think it's important that people can build businesses and build and invest and, and get something out of it beyond, beyond just fame.

• 48:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Okay. Well, Todd, why don't you share one more time, you know, what the, what the story is with the, if people want to watch these shorts on, on their living room TVs, how do they find them?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So by the time people listen to this podcast, we will start rolling out shorts on a TV near you. So that means that viewers are going to be able to enjoy these sort of like fun, interesting burst of content, 60 seconds or less on the big screen right in their living room.

• 49:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  On the YouTube app?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yep. Right in the, right in the YouTube living room app, you know, a lot of like we, the team did a lot of work to sort of evaluate different options and ultimately landed on experience that I think is pretty delightful. And you should expect to see this experience mature over time as we sort of learn how viewers are enjoying it and how best to improve it. So Living Room is one of our fastest growing ways of consuming and Shorts is one of the fastest growing products inside of YouTube. So I'm really excited to see these, these, these two come together.

• 49:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Todd Sherman, thanks so much for joining.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 49:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks, everybody for listening. Thank you, Nick Guatney, for producing the audio, editing, as always. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all of you. Once again, the listeners, appreciate you being here. If you're here at the end, and you can rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, again, that would go a long way to helping us bring more guests on, great guests like Todd. That'll do it for us here on this week's show. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 50:11Speaker 03

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