A deep conversation about Shorts with Jenny Hoyos and Todd Sherman

• Todd Sherman is the product lead for YouTube Shorts.
• Jenny Hoyos creates viral YouTube shorts focused on entertainment and kid-friendly content.
• The hook is essential in capturing viewers' attention in YouTube shorts.
• Creators should balance between trendy content and evergreen themes for longevity.
• Thumbnails may not significantly impact virality in shorts but are important for channel branding.

Who are you, sir? What do you do at YouTube?
I'm Todd Sherman. I'm the product lead for YouTube Shorts.

And Jenny, tell us about yourself. What do you do?
I'm Jenny Hoyos and I make YouTube shorts. And I'm known because I can make anything go viral. Nice. I love that.

So what kind of YouTube shorts do you make?
Yeah, just general entertainment and content for kids. So a lot of challenges. Family content.

Yeah, I've seen you challenge your mom to quite a lot of shopping challenges, creation challenges, some pranks.
Oh yes, I love pranks.

Tell us a little bit about shorts. Like, I think everybody has a rough idea what they are, but how do you define a short on YouTube?
You know, shorts are a little different than long form. Cause on long form, you know, right now you see a preview for that video and then you tap to go watch it.

And shorts, obviously people are, they're swiping in the feed and so they get to discover videos.
And I think, you know, creators are often asking me like, yeah, like what makes a great short?

Yeah. And you know, I think a lot about your videos and hooking people early. Like, how much time do you spend on that hook?
Oh my goodness. Yeah, the hook is the most important thing. Like if people aren't hooked, then they're not going to even see the rest of the videos.

So the hook is everything if actually coming up with the hook doesn't take very long. Because if it's a good hook, it's almost like, like it is the idea.
The hook is my idea. So the hook comes before the idea.

Sometimes I'll have an idea, but if the hook isn't good, I don't make the video.
So it's kind of tough to gauge how long it takes to come up with the hook. But yeah, once we have a good hook, we know we should make the video. Basically.

And like how long do you think you have to really catch somebody based on your experience?
Oh my goodness. It's literally the first frame. Like I really do think you have one second to hook someone, especially on shorts.

And so are you giving them an idea or are you setting an expectation? Like what makes a good hook?
Okay. Yeah. I have a three-step formula that I always do in my head when I come up with hooks.

And the first thing is shock. I want some sort of shock factor. Ideally it's a visual shock factor.
And then I follow that by establishing expectations of what the content's gonna be about.

So know, usually you give a little description of what you're going to do in the video.
And then the third thing is giving an expectation of what's to happen at the end.

We need to know what we are going to get by the end of this video and how we are going to progress to that.
Cause it doesn't matter if someone gets hooked and they're like, oh, this is a cool video.

Okay, I saw the cool thing that happened in the hook and I'm gonna leave.
No, they need to be hooked and stayed and then you gotta deliver.

Yes, exactly. Is there like almost a two-way psychological difference?
Because on browsing videos like long form you click in, but then to abandon it you still have to click out where in shorts you enjoy.

Maybe more exploration, more discovery potential because you are in that feed.
But also, it's just so quick to keep swiping if you don't grab their attention.

Yeah. And you know, some users are very impatient. They want to see great content quickly, which is why I think your videos perform so well.
And then other people are sort of a bit more patient and willing to watch videos to higher completion rates.

And so that's something we have to take into account in the recommendations. All that feeds into S signals into the recommendations.
We just back off and say there is a huge demand, a huge market for short form video.

I don't think that's new. I think back in the day I remember television having breaking news segments or update segments or the more, you know, or after school like segments that would tell it.
Those are all short form content. But now it's fully digital and anybody can make them.

And I think that there are parts of your life where you want that short experience for a certain amount of time that you have.
Yeah. The way I think about short form is that it doesn't just compete against other short form video products.

It sort of is trying to serve a set of user needs that you might think of as snackable entertainment, broadly.
So if somebody comes to YouTube, they may find that they want to watch some shorts. Many people do.

But even if you only have a minute, like what are the things that you would sort of hire in order to be entertained for a minute or two?
You might play a quick game, you might read an article or look at some post on some network, you might watch short form video.

And so they all kind of all those offerings, while they are different, you might even do like one question on a crossword puzzle.
Right on paper. Right.

So you can see how they are all sort of like entertainment and small moments and short formy is really good at helping you sort of like be entertained in those small moments.
You could also be informed in those small moments.

So it fits in a really sort of like unique space. But I think it's also one that's kind of like as old as time. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.

Is that how you sort of think about it? Like you want to tell a complete story in the time that you have?
Yeah, I definitely want to tell a complete story.

But also we don't want to get as much information in as possible in a short amount of time.
There are a few creators who think like, oh, I'm going to be viral on shorts if I give as much information as possible in these 60 seconds because people want to learn as much as possible.

But then it's like, then you're just going to dilute your message.
So I think it's all about just, just like those quick moments, just like keeping people entertained.

And it's like, oh, that's a funny joke.
And on what you focus on is the focus.

Yeah, I say like it's weird. I try not to think of a whole story.
Rather like bits and when I'm making shorts, but within those bits there's its own story.

That's what I think about. It's almost like a mechanic for telling a different kind of story.
Yeah, yeah, story.

Even within short form, I think that you'll find creators that have really honed their craft.
You're at the top of your game for this about around a minute.

But then there are other folks even that it's almost a different style of storytelling where you're very short and it's only like 15 or something seconds.
It's almost more like a moment or a scene or like a vibe.

You know, before we sat down here, we were talking a little bit about Vine.
Back in the day for vine, it was very much so like a very nines 7 second.

It was crazy. It was just like almost no time to really even set a hook and then deliver.
Or it would just be so quick. It's almost just like a moment that.

Or a scene. Just like one scene.
And so even within shorts we see folks focused in that area and that's also really approachable because it usually takes less effort to make something shorter.

Right. Do you think that's a separate audience for a creator?
Like if they are making short, short shorts, should they focus on short shorts?

Or do you think they can go back and forth between like 15 seconds and a minute on the same channel?
Yeah, it's hard to generalize advice like this because we get these questions all the time.

I think that what generally is best is that the creator focuses on the sorts of videos that align the duration that aligns with how they want to tell their story.
Some creators really like to be very casual with it.

Have a joke that is a little bit of a setup and then a delivery in 10 or 20 seconds.
And they might only spend 20 minutes on that video or less, sometimes even less.

Especially if they're jumping in on trend where a concept is working and you can replicate it and jump in.
It doesn't take a lot of time to produce.

Those other creators are high craft and really purposeful with their storytelling and their production effort.
And so sometimes people will span both those areas.

But usually creators fall in more one or the other.
Like a lighter weight production process versus one that's a bit more sophisticated, which is where I think you're at.

The level of craft is like you were telling us before, like what it takes for you to make a short.
Oh yeah, it's about an hour per second per second. So 59.9 seconds is exactly.

That's a lot of hours.
Exactly. But if it's only 15 seconds, maybe only 15 hours, that's still an amazing amount of work.

Like we're used to traditional entertainment.
Thinking about like a lot of movies in terms of months to make hours, but like hours to make seconds is amazing as well.

Yeah, it's actually. It's scary when you think about it like that.
What's the process you go through?

Is it like ideation first and then production?
Like how do you move through the process?

Yeah, so first things first is ideation.
And when it comes to ideation, I think of ideas that are very primitive.

So things that all humans can relate to. Not because, oh, that's so funny and relatable, but no, it's relatable because we all have to drink water, we all have to eat food and we all like every human experiences this experience.
Those are what I try to think of when I'm coming up with my ideas because I wanted to have as many views as possible.

From there we think of the most critical things for success of the video.
Like that is number one when trying to produce the video, we try to think of like all the things that could potentially fail.

And that's how we produce the video.
And then I go out and film and it goes to the editors and it's a constant, just back and forth process when getting edited.

But yeah, that's the process.
So polishing every second as well.

Yeah, we polish it a lot.
So like, to be specific, like we have the editors do DIT selects and a story cut and then from there they will send their story cut and select, which is basically just like the video, like trim to what it will be without any visual effects or music.

And then usually we'll go through like five versions of a story cut.
And the reason we need the selects, which is basically like the raw footage without like the empty pauses, helps us like give feedback as to how the story could be improved.

And we're just like, we're like manipulating the video is like crazy.
Like I have one video where I had a conversation with someone but it was kind of boring and my editor literally took random parts and made a completely new video.

The way it did not play out at all. It's actually crazy, like magic.
I saw a puzzle. It's pretty funny.

But yeah, that's where most of the time actually goes.
Just like figuring out the edit the jigsaw.

And then, yeah, they just finish once it's approved.
They just do visual effects music and they wrap it up and you give it to the feed.

Exactly.

Is there a mechanic that you have to think about when you do have casual creators versus leaned in creators, people making 15 seconds versus an hour.
Just in terms of how you give all of that an opportunity?

Yeah, it's something we've been thinking a lot about.
One of the things that we are experimenting with is kind of having some coherence in the feed around video duration.

So if you imagine that you are in the feed in this example that I'm providing, and you're going in between really high quality, high production effort videos and then you swipe to something that is much more like user-generated content and only took a couple minutes, there's a real shift there that you can observe.
But on the other hand, if you take all those shorter videos and sort of bring them together in a feed, then figure out which ones are the best ones and obviously personalized it so that you're getting the things you want.

They tend to feel more natural when you're going in between them.
You're also interacting more as you go because the videos are shorter and so it's a bit more faster paced and punchy.

And it also has a vibe of being more approachable.
But we also obviously want to have the best content that has the highest production effort get the biggest audience also.

And so coherence around feeds like that that are concentrated on that content may very well also be good.
So we're starting to experiment with some coherence around the feed, like sometimes faster-paced and really punchy and then sometimes a little slower pace and longer videos so that the user can kind of get into a mode.

And you maybe as you're swiping through shorts experience some of these things.
If you're trying to observe what's happening.

Yeah. Do you feel that when you're swiping through shorts as well, do you get into modes?
Yeah. That is actually really interesting.

I never thought about it like that.
I think it's actually very seamless the way YouTube does it.

But yeah, I think it is kind of like that because when I'm running into those really short videos, I keep getting more short videos versus when I'm on those, those longer shorts I do get served more.
That actually makes so much sense.

It would be very jarring if it was like a 60 second short, then a 10 second short, then you scroll again and now it's 30.
So yeah, it makes sense.

Does that fit into? We've been talking for a while about it's better not to think about algorithms because you're not making videos for machines.
Think about audiences because you're making videos for people.

Do you want to be thoughtful when you're thinking about which videos you're going to be shown with, or the style of video you're making, or whether you're casual or whether you're doing high production,
Is that something that in your planning, like consistency might be beneficial to you from the creator point of view?

You.
I think that we really want to serve creators and meet them where they are.

So if a creator happened to mostly make one-minute videos or 50 or 60 second videos, then that's great.
We're gonna do our best to find that creator the audience they deserve.

On the other hand, if you're at the opposite end of the spectrum, you mostly making shorter videos, same thing.
And then if you live in both those worlds, we're gonna try and do our best.

So there's nothing in there that would like favor a creator if they only focused on one.
But I think when you make shorter videos in some ways they're like in the part of the ecosystem where they're almost like you should expect them to be amongst similar videos from the viewer point of view.

Right. So you know, that coherence I think benefits viewers and I'm not sure if it's helpful for creators to sort of know that's what we're experimenting with.
But that's sort of what we're trying.

Yeah. Do you know if there's a bigger audience in 15-second shorts versus like 60-second shorts?
It's hard to answer because it changes and it's like continually changing.

As more creators join and they try new things, one part of the ecosystem may be growing.
We have a lot of very capable professional creators on YouTube that love using shorts.

And when they power up the sort of like video creation pipeline that they have at their disposal, you know like great cameras, computers, sophisticated video editing software, they tend to lean towards longer videos.
And then folks that are more sort of like motivated by wanting to share a cool moment or join in on a trend or you videos of their cats.

You can make videos about your cats, by the way, one minute long also.
But there's a lot of cat videos that are also shorter.

Char cats gotta be a really charming cat.
Yeah, like a lot of those.

More. It's like more like user-generated content tends to be shorter and it also gets a lot of audience too because a lot more people tend to be able to make those shorter videos because they just require less.
I think it's like a moment or a scene opposed to needing to craft the beginning and middle and end of a storytelling like a lot of our most capable sophisticated creators do.

The reason I was asking is on long form will often say if it's the same audience, keep it on the same channel.
If it's a different audience, put it on a different channel.

Also for cross formats, like if you're podcasting and doing shorts or going live, like think are those videos all same serving the same audience?
Because one of the things that we've heard is you have to choose a thumbnail like and you have all these options for thumbnails.

And if I'm used to clicking on Jenny's thumbnail, I know exactly what I'm going to get.
It's a no brainer to click anytime I want that.

But if I don't know what I'm gonna get then it's more of a risk.
It's like I'm not sure what she's gonna give me, so I'm gonna pick this other video that I know what I'm getting.

Shorts is such a different mechanic because you're in the feed and you might get that video regardless.
So do you have advice for creators if they're thinking about when they should do multiple channels for shorts versus the same channel?

Yeah, now that I heard you reflect on it, I think the one thing I would add about the previous point is that when we look at what viewers enjoy, there are, it's usually the case that viewers that enjoy a bunch of short, really short videos, like imagine 10 and 20 seconds, they also enjoy a lot of 60-second videos and they actually also enjoy 10 and 20 minute videos.

And so a lot of the most engaged people with YouTube span that entire area.
And then it's our job to personalize within each of those areas.

In terms of the advice to creators about the same channel, we tend to get this question a bunch.
Yeah, I think if it's sort of like the type of content regardless of the duration of the content that is related to what you normally make and watching it, like let's say you make a bunch of shorter videos and people are enjoying that and then they go and check out your longer videos.

If it a complete disconnect, like if your shorter videos are just about cats and your longer videos are about aerial photography, that might be a bit of a disconnect because the expectation maybe that you're setting in one doesn't apply to the other.
But most creators tend to not do that.

Occasionally they will experiment with shorts as a sort of side creative project.
That is a real departure.

And in some of those cases, they're fine with it being on their same channel.
But if they're really trying to grow an audience here instead of it being kind of like a creative offshoot, then sometimes they prefer a separate channel.

Yeah, I have a question. So we've been talking a lot about video duration and from what I've seen on my channel and from my understanding watch time is pretty important.
However, there are times where I do, you know, small bite-sized things that are like 15 seconds and in that case I really pay attention to rewatchability.

So how important do you think rewatchability is for shorts?
Some of the best performing very short videos can be very rewatchable.

Sometimes that's very deliberate by the creator where they will craft a video that really inspires the viewer to want to watch it again.
Sometimes it's sort of circumstantial and it might be more of like a random video, more like user generated content.

That was a moment that was just incredible that you need to like re-watch to even figure out like what happened, like what just happened there.
Like you know, I saw something recently where was like there was like a goat outside of a shop and it like stood up on a tine legs and threw its horns through the glasses.

Like I need to watch this again to understand like what happened here or to even.
It felt just as good watching it the second time as a first.

On the other hand, a lot of creators, they craft and architect the video where it's like, not only do you want to get past the first loop, you also go and want to watch it again because maybe there was some trick, and you also want to see what.
You're basically orchestrating that rewatchability.

So I think it could be important.
It's not like we strictly optimize for two loops or something like this.

You know, when you think about watch time, I would think of it as sort of a proxy for what viewers value.
Like, if are they valuing the video?

The only thing none of us get more of is time.
And so if they're spending time on it, that's a proxy for it.

But we even go beyond watch time.
You probably have heard us talk before about valued watch time.

Like, we really try and estimate not only did the viewer complete the video or watch it to a high degree, but that they value it afterwards.
And so that also carries a lot of weight in our systems.

But it's great that creators can tell their story at 60 seconds, but we also want them to be able to have the ability to tell a shorter story.
And so longer isn't necessarily always better.

But lots of creators, including yourself, get lots of traction at around that minute mark, and so that's great.
We get that question a lot.

Like, on long form, you have click through rate and then watch time, or like average view duration.
But you can.

That video could be three minutes, or it could be 30 minutes, or it could be an hour and a half.
On the shorts world, we have VUE versus Swiped Away, which is a great metric, just to see how people are engaging.

Do they. Should creators look at watch time on Shorts?
Is it more like percentage view that matter because the shorts can be a different length or do you weigh it differently?

Or how should creators be thinking in those terms?
That metric around viewed versus Swiped Away is a great one.

A lot of the times when I meet up with a creator and they're like, hey, why didn't this video perform well?
We go and look at their analytics and then we look at like 10 of their videos, and then the one that they're pointing out wondering why it didn't perform well, like the percentage of people that swiped away was just much higher.

Hook.
Right? They didn't get them in the hook.

Yeah, Right.
And so I would definitely take a look at that because, you know, people just aren't going to watch the end of the video unless they get hooked in the beginning or really feel like there's something that they should stick around for.

In terms of like the weights in the algorithm.
Like you know, watch time certainly carries weight as a proxy for if the viewer valued it.

But we do go beyond that with sort of trying to calculate if people value that.
And we kind of have a sophisticated approach there of trying to model out if somebody valued it with surveys that we run.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that a 10 second or a 20 second video is always out competed by a 60 second video.
And so when we try and do in recommendations is independent of duration, figure out if somebody really enjoyed the video so that we can kind of like you might say normalize for duration a bit.

If you're on top of your game and you're making 15-second videos, we want you to be able to do well there and find a great audience.
So you can make those 15-second laps and you'll be good.

They just need to be rewatchable.
Yeah, well, I mean they could be probably the ones that will perform best.

People will probably watch a lot because they're great.
Yeah, thank you.

On the other element of it, like the more casual creation side, one of the things, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this that I've been observing is back in the day we had forums and then we got to social media and people would just share their opinions on social media.
And increasingly it feels like people are just wanting to share their opinions through shorts.

Like they may not even consider themselves like a capital C creator, but they'll go on there and talk about the movie they just saw or the debate that they just watched.
And it's their way to share their voice with the world.

And there are whole channels based on reply with shorts where they like make a statement.
Somebody says something in the comments, they use that comment to make the next short comments on that.

That makes the next short.
That seems like conversations are shifting from like the text-based medium into more of a visual world.

It's just getting easier and easier to make video.
Right.

So and yeah, a lot of people that they may have thousands of subscribers.
If you were to catch them outside of the context of this conversation and ask them like what do you do?

They would say, well I'm a student or what are your hobbies? Well, I do this.
And they may not even call themselves a creator, but they find it as a creative outlet where they can express themselves, find a little bit of a community of people that have some shared interest with them.

Or yeah, maybe they just have a derpy cat and they just want to share videos of that.
Because previously people would say live is maximum engagement but not very great reach where Shorts is incredible reach.

But you can't build as much of a community there.
But I think things reply with Shorts and Vertical Live in the Shorts feed, it's sort of making those previous assumptions not correct anymore.

Like you can pick the format you like and still find your audience and connect with them that way.
Yeah, I've talked to so many creators of all different types about community and what does it mean a lot of creators, if you were to try and choose an alternative phrase?

I think what they really mean is a fandom around their content.
And of course creators having this is amazing because it's just the validation that keeps them going.

Like they know that people are loving their content.
There's other ways that this manifest in short form especially I think that you can sort of be part of the community.

So like imagine people are really into gardening, right?
So you might be watching gardening creators and then you may say well I also garden and you are like joining that community of creators and they sort of like they come to know each other and you see how like that's a different use of community than sort of like the loyal viewership and the fandom both are extremely important but they're sort of different.

So that word is sort of like I think has different meanings depending on where what you're trying to get out of YouTube, you know what I mean?
How much does shareability because you were talking about different things that you like rewatchability.

Do you think about shareability?
Like when you have the video, this is like a video that someone is going to rush out and tell their friends they have to watch.

I actually don't really pay attention to shareability.
I like to make my videos as commentable and shareable as possible.

But I don't actively look at the shares or comments as a metric to track whether the video is going to perform or not.
Basically long story short is I had someone from my team create a Pearson correlation checker and they got all our all our data and analytics and views and then they correlated views to every single metric and we saw that things like likes comment shares were at least for my channel from that calculation didn't really affect video performance.

What did affect video performance were more of the things we were talking about like view for swipe away retention, watch time average view per viewer for rewatchability things more in relation to time.
Like you're saying, how do you think about things like interactions, for example, like the ask me sticker or the show me, like add yours sticker and ways of sharing shorts.

How does that factor into your thinking?
In recommendations, we're always looking for strong signals that predict people enjoying the videos that they get recommended.

So anytime there's enough volume on a signal, liking and disliking and commenting and sharing are ones that have a decent amount of signal.
But not everybody does it on every video.

Right. And so like the average view duration and watch time and how many people viewed it versus swiped away, that is something that happens on every single video.
And so what we really try and do is take all those signals into account.

And then, you know, the way these machine learning algorithms work is they can figure out how strong the signal is with regards to recommending videos based on some objective that we define.
And so really what we try and do is bring all the signals in and then be clear to how we're sort of like shaping the algorithm about what the objective is.

And ultimately the objective comes down to people enjoying the videos that they watched and then it'll figure out how strong a signal is.
Right.

And so that's sort of how it works.
So if I make my cat video and say add yours and I get like a billion other cat videos, that's a pretty strong signal.

Yeah, that would be a strong signal.
Where else are you thinking?

Because there have been a lot of shorts features rolled out this year, your team is just crushing it.
But we do have more stickers, there's more ways to remix shorts now.

How do you think about balancing the different interactive parts of shorts with just like people who maybe are making wholly original shorts with people who are still doing that 15 seconds casual chat short?
Is it just like multiple tools and you pick what's best for you and your vision?

Yeah, I think that's really what it is.
I think that we're doing a job when we can provide creators a portfolio of tools that they find useful.

Sometimes creators go all in on one and they base their entire channel around that.
Other times it's more selective.

Like part of their content planning strategy is, well, I'm going to put a lot of effort into this video, but then in between those things, I'll use these tools because they're lighter weight, do some Q and A, respond to comments, and sort of keep their audience engaged and also hear from their audience.
So it really depends on what the creator how they like to plan out their content.

How do you think about that kind of stuff when you see a new short feature come up?
Like a new way to remix a green screen or like reply with shorts or the stickers.

Yeah, I think it's amazing for creators or young creators especially who want to get into creating content and they don't know how to do it and they don't have the budget to afford cameras or things to do these high production videos.
I personally never use any of those features because just because my videos are like higher production.

But I think it's very helpful for those who are just getting started.
For sure.

It feels like almost a prompt sometimes.
Like I'll go in there and look and there'll be a comment or there'll be a thing that I can just.

Oh, I don't have to worry about this right now.
I can just do that.

It makes it very easy for them.
Like you said now there's less time spent on ideas cause they already know what's relatable for their audience.

Less time spent editing cause there's the green screen feature or even with the remix feature now you don't need to edit certain stuff in cause it's like so easy and then you can just simply just add a sound and you don't have to like go on YouTube and then download the song on one of those scammy websites that keep doing this weird pop up and then just to download the song and put in your video.
You know, it just makes it so much easier.

Yeah, really low.
I think that's really, that really hits the nail in the head.

It really helps lower the barriers for people getting started.
Some creators do like to pull it into their sort of content planning.

But it really makes it easy when you basically have a good starting point.
Low barrier but still high quality.

Right.
Like it's still higher quality than someone who tries to actually get a green screen and actually tries to do it.

It actually looks better.
So yeah, it's amazing.

That's a conscious thing too.
It's like making sure it's accessible especially for aspiring creators or just people who want to participate.

Yeah, I mean the amazing thing about YouTube is that you.
We want to make it easy for you to get started and that might be using some of these tools might be making shorter videos.

We also want to make it great for creators that are more capable, sophisticated, higher production effort to crush it in shorts and get a big audience.
And then there's also all of long form and then there's also YouTube in the living room.

And so when you think about the number of screens and the breadth of the ecosystem, like what better place to be a creator?
Right?

There's one thing I've heard and I'm curious for your take on this.
Like a short isn't just a short long and a long isn't just a long short.

Yeah. They can give you the same feeling, but you can't just like cut one or glue two together.
No, yeah, I mean, I completely agree.

Similar to what I was saying earlier, like, you know, sometimes it's too much information if put.
If you try to put way too much in a short, people aren't gonna be able to follow.

Especially since like when people are scrolling through shorts, like they're already experiencing like there's already so much going on.
They're seeing so many different types of videos and now on your video you're gonna tell them like 10 different things that's going on.

A long form wouldn't work on a short and vice versa.
With long form there's more breathing room.

So you can't just like extend it short.
Cause then that would just be boring.

Yeah. Is that what you see as well?
It's not just, it's more of a feeling and not just like a runtime.

I mean, I get that some creators want to do this, it's the easiest thing and just chop up their long form and put it in a short.
And I think that that can work.

Podcast clips are popular.
Yeah, I mean that can work.

Especially if it's like a moment that is really interesting.
But I think the best performing content, it tends to be purposefully made for sort of aligning with the viewers expectations.

Right.
So that might be very short or it might be around a minute, or if it's 10 or 20 plus minutes on long form, just doing it once and then cutting it down.

There's value there.
But I think it tends to perform not as good as when you're purposeful about making content that stands on its own for that part of the ecosystem.

One of the questions we get a lot is how often should you post?
Like you said that you can do a couple or a few shorts.

Are we just given you workload?
But there are other people who are like, if I can post 10 or 20 times a day, should I do it?

Are there like reasonable limits that you think about in terms of volume?
I mean, I think the first thing to say is that being a creator is a tough job and that creators should make sure that they Run the marathon.

It's not a sprint.
It really is a marathon.

And so that's definitely my advice for creators.
When creators are putting in a ton of effort an hour per second, that's wild.

You sort of have to make sure that you pace yourself in a way that does make that sustainable.
On the other hand, if you're making a lot of 10 and 20 second videos and you're jumping in on a trend or it's easy because you have a lot of cats around the house, then you might be able to produce just so many more videos for a given period of time.

Right.
And so they might be able to do it a lot more frequently and they're shorter and the production effort is lower.

And so I think creators, usually they know best and I would just encourage them to run the marathon, not sprinted.
Yeah, yeah.

I think something varies.
Like if you're doing breaking news, maybe your audience has an appetite for I want this as soon as possible and I want as much as possible and I'll pick the things that interest me.

But if you're doing something that is more intentful or more focused or unbe, they're fine with those coming out even like once a week or something because that's the product they want.
It's evergreen, right?

Yeah, yeah.
Way more evergreen.

Yeah, that's a good question.
How do you think about evergreen as opposed to topical when it comes to shorts?

Timeliness is something that timeliness and freshness is something that we've been working on and thinking a lot about.
It's easy to sort of like think about some examples that require an audience within a certain time window.

I mean, news content is sort of one of them.
But even trend content, like trends tend to grow over a period of time.

As people see it, enjoy it, some percentage of people will participate and then it'll sort of go away as another trend takes it place there.
There's timeliness there.

And so there's certain content that really needs to get to an audience quickly and really get to all the people that would want to watch it in a relatively short period of time.
I'm using timeliness to describe that.

There's general freshness though, which is something that we want the ecosystem I think generally to be relatively fresh.
But then there's going to be some content that, you know, it doesn't depend on something in the zeitgeist to connect with people.

And that's where we want to be very deliberate about making sure evergreen content continues to get an audience over time.
And when you think about long form.

YouTube, a lot of creators love long form for that.
I think that applies certainly part of shorts, but maybe on the shorter end of things, that content tends to have a shorter shelf life be a bit more trendy or maybe topical if you want to call it that.

What approach do you think YouTubers should take?
Should they be hopping on trends?

Should they be making topical content or should they mainly do evergreen?
Should they do a combination of both? What do you think?

Some creators are trends creators and what their content development process looks like is watching shorts, even watching other platforms, looking at what trends are out there and then coming up with their take on that joke.
And that takes some time.

Or learning the dance, which also takes some time.
It would take me forever because I'm not skilled in that way.

But that also takes a certain type of effort.
But they're sort of like their process begins by watching other content and then getting familiar with the concept and seeing if it's one that they feel like fits with the type of creator they are and the type of trends they ride.

So just focusing on that narrow area of trends.
There's basically just creators that are focused just on trends.

And I think that is a really easy way to get started because you sort of don't have to come up with a fully original concept.
Like you spend so much time on the ideation phase.

The vision I have in my head is like there's almost like a trash can of crumbled up papers of all the ideas you didn't go with.
Right?

Way too many ideas.
We probably say yes to one in every 50, right?

But if you're a trend creator, you can see which idea is working because now you can see like there's thousands of people doing it and it seems to be catching on.
And so that's a really easy way to get started.

So I would never prescribe to a creator like yourself.
Like, you should do trends, right?

Because it may be something that you want to jump in on every once in a while.
Like I hear from big, successful, higher production effort creators that they feel like it's like kind of like shoot from the hip content that they could join every once in a while without a lot of effort, without spending an hour per second.

On the other hand, some creators just like to focus on their craft and upping their game in their niche and that's also great.
So I would never prescribe what creators should focus on, but rather sort of, how are they trying to make progress?

How much time do they want to spend?
Where are they at in their journey?

Some creators even start out on trends, like with jokes.
Like their take on a joke.

I usually pair with some audio that supports that joke.
But then later I'll see them try and move into some original jokes.

So it's almost like the way for them to kind of get started on their journey.
So it sort of really just depends.

Yeah. How do you think about longevity?
Because some people say doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same different results doesn't work.

But also we've seen over the course of years doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results doesn't always work.
So I know you're still really fresh, but do you think about reinvention and relevancy and those sorts of things?

Oh, yeah, no, definitely.
Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot to say.
Like, okay, so for one.

Cause I wanted to say this about the trending stuff.
For example, like, I love doing trends, but back to longevity.

I don't want the trend to fall off.
Cause most trends usually fall off for a new trend to come back in.

So when I put my take on it, I try to think about ways that I can make it something that actually can be evergreen beyond the shelf life of that trend, and it goes back to like human relatability.
So, yeah, I almost.

No, literally every video I make actually are just evergreen content.
And some of them are trends that I'm turning into evergreen content.

And as far as like, for example, like when I have buckets.
So I used to make a lot of food videos where I would make foods for a dollar.

It does get old.
So I try not to do the same thing.

I do like to do the same kind of style and vibe and idea, but execute it in different ways just so it's like always fresh.
Because if the algorithm tries to follow the audience, the audience moves.

Creators have to move or stay fresh or keep their eyes on what's happening in the meta.
I mean, I think over a period of time, viewer preferences inevitably change.

Right.
You see, creators will innovate, they'll come up with new verticals, and then viewers love it.

And then some creators want to jump on that.
And that's great.

I think that's part of the magic of YouTube.
Unboxing videos could have never taken off on broadcast television.

It's the adaptability of the creator ecosystem that aligns with viewers over time.
So I think that's part of the beauty of it.

So there's something I ask you every year or there's a few things I ask you every year and I'm always interested if the answer is the same.
If the answer changes.

Thumbnails on shorts.
We can choose custom frames on mobile.

And previously it was, well, some creators don't want to have the extra overhead that's become like the whole industry of thumbnails on long form.
Is shorts evolving?

Do you still think the same thing? Are you still waiting for creator feedback on it?
I'd be interested.

Hear your take first?
Yeah.

Let's your take.
Thumbnails are not important because 99.9% of the views are coming from the shorts feed.

Right.
Like most of the views are gonna be people who are scrolling and won't even see your thumbnail.

So as far as video performance, thumbnails do not matter.
What about your channel page?

If sponsors are looking.
I was just about to say that.

Though I will say, as far as channel marketing and branding, I think thumbnails are very important.
Especially like something as little as like with brands.

When I send them screenshots of like past performing videos, like even them just seeing how professional the page looks.
Or even like when I'm saying, oh, look at what I did for this brand.

And usually I'll take a screenshot of the video thumbnails with the views and the titles along with the video links and it makes it look so much better.
So yeah, we, we do make thumbnails, but it's not important.

It's not important for the audience to make a decision about your video, but it kind of serves the purpose of you having your channel look more professional.
Yes.

I want the channel to look professional primarily for branding.
Yeah.

This aligns a lot of what I hear.
Like people are like, no, I get that people aren't depending on it mostly to make a decision about the video.

Cause you just start watching in the feed and then the thing I usually hear is like, yeah, but when people go to my channel, I want it to like look better or the shelf.
Yeah.

So it's something we're thinking about.
Yeah.

My concern is people making thumbnails that look way too different or like it goes back to like the clickbait culture.
Like even when I do my thumbnails, it looks like literally what happened in the video just exaggerated a little bit.

Right.
Yeah.

I think creators keep asking us about this, but I think it's still like when you talk to creators, there's a lot of opinions on it.
Yeah.

Cause some creators, especially long form creators that are doing shorts for various reasons.
Maybe it's a creative outlet or sort of an offshoot or that they're trying something new.

They want it to feel oftentimes they want it to feel like a lighter weight thing compared to their high production effort longer form videos and they're used to spending a lot of time on thumbnails on long form and they actually don't want that there.
On the other hand I talked to short first creators and a lot of them say the same exact thing I was just hearing which is like yeah but I want my channel to look really good.

So yeah, we're thinking about it so stay tuned and keep stay tuned.
Yeah, stay tuned.

Todd, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
It's been fun.

Jenny, thank you so much.
Yeah, this is great.

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