Google announced creating a dedicated watch page for news on YouTube that lets users access trending stories from authoritative sources.
The new section contains live streams, Podcasts and Shorts of various news from different organizations, making it easier for users to consume them all in one place. Also, Google is aiding specific news organizations financially to create short news clips.
Pushing News on YouTube
Google this week announced a couple of new initiatives for prioritizing news on YouTube that help both the news organizations and users in their ways. Firstly, the company added an immersive watch page to YouTube for finding news stories of various kinds, like video on demand, live streams, podcasts and Shorts.
The new section is available through the newspaper icon on the YouTube homepage. The dedicated news section is rolling out to mobile users in 40 countries, with desktop and TV versions receiving this feature later.
Next up is the Shorts Innovation Program, which finances news organizations worldwide to help them create short-form video content. YouTube started with a $1.6 million budget for over 30 organizations in 10 countries to develop news-based Shorts.
“Participants are selected based on having a strong existing long-form video presence on YouTube, but are looking to improve and expand their Shorts news content creation.”
Some selected news agencies include Univision from the U.S., AFP in France and Mediacorp in Singapore. YouTube specialists will work with these news organizations to create short content strategies and best practices for video production.
A number of news publishers have already embraced TikTok so that Google would have it’s share in this market. This is also necessary to cash in on the hole created by Meta, as the company pulled news from its Facebook and Instagram in Canada, the U.K., Germany and France recently.
Meta’s recently launched Threads, too, is distancing itself from serving news on its platform to differentiate itself from X and save itself from moderation headaches.
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