The idea behind YouTube Shorts is simple: videos that go into that section can’t be longer than a minute and must be in vertical format, while traditional full-length videos have their own section in the traditional feed.
YouTube experiments with long-form videos in Shorts
But today, YouTube is testing a feature for some subscribers. premium which mixes precisely these two things. This latest experiment embeds long-form videos into the YouTube Shorts feed. So if your account has been selected, you may find yourself with two-hour-long YouTube videos in your feed. All while scrolling through one-minute clips.
The change has been addressed by Google in its support page. In it you can read that «To try to help viewers better discover content across YouTube’s different channels, formats and lengths, we’re running some small experiments on the watch page and with Shorts. If you’re a viewer in the experiment, these new discovery experiences could include a mix of video formats, including long-form videos where you’d normally see Shorts or new feeds of long-form videos.
The change might have the effect of helping creators of longer, traditional videos. But it also goes against the purpose of Shorts. It will depend on your tastes whether you like the change or not.
However, this is still only a limited experiment, and Google is likely to remove it if it negatively impacts the company’s analytics.
