One year ago, YouTube introduced Shorts in Nigeria to further our mission to give everyone a voice and help creators grow their audiences and be inspired by new video formats. Since its inception, YouTube Shorts has grown into a community of more than 1.5 billion monthly logged-in users globally. 

At the heart of YouTube’s journey are the voices of our creators and artists. “When we introduced Shorts, we knew that we were bringing an important new format to the YouTube repertoire. For artists, the path to success has never been more demanding, so we are designing products like Shorts to make YouTube the place for them to connect with their fans and grow long-term, sustainable music careers,” the company said in a statement.

The platform recently introduced new features into the broader YouTube experience. With video remixing, creators can put their own spin on the content they love from YouTube using the Cut and Green Screen to Shorts on iOS (coming to Android soon). These tools enable creators to use a 1- to 5-second video segment in their new Short, or a video segment of up to 60 seconds as the background for their new Short, from any eligible video-on-demand (VOD) or Short.

The platform also rolled out a multiformat analytics feature, a new design for YouTube Analytics. allows creators and artists to see insights and performance data for specific content across our different video formats: VOD (video on demand), Live and Shorts. This allows them to individualize and optimize their content strategies more effectively to make the most of the platform for both reach and revenue opportunities. 

As YouTube introduces new products, there is a new trend unique to the platform –“the rise of the multiformat creator and artist.” Moving seamlessly between different video formats on YouTube – from Shorts, Longform, Live and Audio – these multiformat creators and artists create an infinite flow of content combinations to maximize their creativity, reach, community connection and revenue. This interplay between video formats mirrors the reality of today’s viewers, who expect content to suit their active lives, varied interests and wide-ranging attention spans. 

This approach is yielding real results for both our creators and artists. With the launch of Shorts, artist and creator channels uploading both Shorts and long-form are seeing better overall watch time and subscriber growth relative to those uploading only long-form. In April 2022, Shorts containing content sampled from long-form videos generated over 100 billion views. 

Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, said “Shorts have become an essential part of the YouTube experience for our creators and viewers. Now being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month, the product is growing thanks to the creativity of our community. While we’re still at the beginning of our journey with Shorts, we look forward to continuing to innovate the product so our creators can continue to express themselves, connect with their audiences, and increase their reach and revenue opportunities on the platform.”

Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, explained that “Everybody knows that our mission at YouTube is to become the leading revenue generator for the music industry. Money is great, but it’s not enough. Building artist fandom is equally important. We want YouTube to be the place for artists to connect and create meaningful relationships with their fans and grow long-term, sustainable music careers; Shorts, combined with long-form video, are proving to be a critical way to do that. It’s our job to make sure that once fans find their life’s soundtrack on Shorts, they are met with prompts that encourage them to dive deeper into an artist’s repertoire. YouTube is the only platform that can bring that experience to reality and we are all in on making it happen,”

Shorts creators and artists are using YouTube to lead the next wave of the creator economy. Here is the list of the top 10 trending Shorts videos in the past year in Nigeria:

About YouTube

Launched in May 2005, YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community allowing billions of people to discover, watch and share videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.