YouTube Shorts is working. That much Todd Sherman knows for sure. Sherman, the product manager behind YouTube’s endless-scrolling short-form TikTok competitor, is quick to quote the numbers: 1.5 billion users a month are watching Shorts, and they’re watching 30 billion videos a month. “And those numbers were back in the beginning of the year,” he says. “Things have grown since then.” Creators are monetizing; viewers are watching; everything seems to be trending in the right direction.
The question really facing YouTube — now that it’s increasingly clear that the TikTok-style vertical scroll is part of the future of video, and now that Shorts seems likely to be part of that future — is how Shorts actually fits in. YouTube is already so...
