YouTube Clips Tests Twitch-Like Video Snippet Sharing

YouTube remains the world's biggest video-sharing site even with the likes of Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram eating away some parts of that pie. Despite the platform's goal of maximizing engagement, especially with money-making YouTubers, it has been criticized at times for being slow on innovating new features and implementing much-needed ones. Lately, however, it has been testing out features that are eerily similar to some other platforms' features and its latest clearly takes a page out of Twitch's clip-sharing functionality.

Thanks to nearly infinitesimal cloud storage and more ubiquitous Internet connections, YouTube videos are no longer measured in single-digit minutes but sometimes in hours. That makes it harder to draw viewers' attention to specific segments of the video, even if you can actually share a URL that starts at a particular timestamp. With the new Clips feature, that has finally become a thing of the past.

The feature is as simple as it sounds. You click on the clip icon beneath the video you're interested in and select a contiguous section of the video you want to share for a minimum of 5 seconds and a maximum of 60. Simply add a title and share away via social networks or a good, old-fashioned URL.

Those who walk on different video streaming platforms will easily see marks of Twitch's Clips, noted by some to be one of its best features. YouTube will probably be labeled as a copycat but those who make a living on the platform will definitely breathe a sigh of relief at finally having an easy way to accomplish what would usually require a video editor to do. Perhaps in a few years, we might even forget who did it first when every Internet video platform already has it.

That said, YouTube Clips is still an experiment and may or may not make it all the way to the end. It is currently available only on desktop browsers and Android but support for iOS devices is promised to come soon.