Joe Hindy / Android Authority
summary
Google is testing longer video recommendations in the YouTube Shorts feed with a group of users. The experiment aims to increase discoverability of longer videos by inserting them in more places across the platform. It remains to be seen whether Google will embrace the change and roll it out to all YouTube users, or whether it will phase it out in the future.
Google is continually testing new changes across its products and monitoring how they impact user experience. The latest experiment will insert longer videos into the YouTube Shorts feed, so if your account is selected, you might see a two-hour YouTube documentary while scrolling through one-minute clips.
According to an updated Google support document, YouTube is testing some new content discovery experiences. The document states:
We’re running some small experiments on our video watch page and Shorts to help viewers more easily discover content from different channels, formats and lengths. For viewers who are participating in experiments, these new discovery experiences may include different video formats, including longer videos (e.g., the Shorts feed) and a new feed of longer videos where Shorts typically appear.
While this change may increase views of creators’ long-form videos, it may degrade the experience for viewers, especially in the short-form feed. Users visit a dedicated tab when they’re looking for short, light content they can scroll through. They could swipe away a long-form video as soon as it appears, but it would break the viewing flow and require an extra action.
Users have always been able to find relevant long-form videos on YouTube’s main page, so those who want to watch long-form content can always access that tab. Objectively, it makes little sense to insert landscape footage into a portrait video player. After all, this is only a limited experiment and may be discontinued by Google if it negatively impacts our analytics.
As well as putting longer-form videos in a short feed, YouTube is also running other experiments on the platform: last week it announced picture-in-picture support for live mid-rolls, which will allow eligible creators to insert ads into their streams without significantly disrupting the viewing experience.
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