2025 is here already?!

It's the new year and YouTube and other social media platforms are already working on their next implements. There's still the looming TikTok ban, which is causing a surge in downloads for two other Chinese-based app called Red Note and Lemon8. There's still a possibility it might not be banned.

Either way, this potential threat should enlighten you to not put all your eggs in one basket.

Meta has also made a change to remove their fact-checker in favor of community notes. This has caused a surge of Google searches on how to delete your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads account. Will people go through with this? Where will they move to? Most likely BlueSky.

Below are a couple upcoming features you should keep an eye on from YouTube.

Clipping the most engaged segment of your long-form video and publishing it as a Short, all in the YouTube Studio.

YouTube started a new and interesting experiment that will do exactly what the title above says. Not much has been said other than what is quoted here:

In recent years, YouTube has been introducing features that has been prominent in third-party extensions like the Research tool that's similar to VidIQ or TubeBuddy's keyword research. This time around, it appears YouTube is working on a feature that could rival sites like OpusClip that generate potential viral clips from your video.

It might be a bit barebone if the feature's using YouTube's video editor tool, but we'll have to wait to hear about this feature from people who are a part of the test group.

Watch-along and the prospect of watching multiple stream at once is coming this year.

In the last release notes of 2024, Rene Ritchie—the YouTube Liaison—asked Johanna—YouTube's Chief Producer Officer—about any plans YouTube has for 2025. Her spoiler update hints at watch-alongs.

For example, you're watching a sporting event and you want to watch a streamer to provide commentary. The streamer will most likely do a watch-along format to prevent copyright strikes, which means you'll need your own footage to sync with their commentary.

This can be done with the picture-in-picture (PiP) feature on browsers like Chrome or Firefox. There are also third-party websites that allows viewers to watch multiple streams on Twitch, YouTube, and more. However, YouTube wants to cut out the middle man by letting you watch both stream on the same page.

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What does this mean for you? Reaction videos have become a big part of YouTube, from watching creators react to shows or movies for the first time to creators reacting to other YouTube videos. Some have even moved to reacting live with chat. This creates a few problems.

The biggest and obvious issue is copyright. You can't show the whole movie and you shouldn't show the whole YouTube video because this doesn't fall under Fair Use. If creator A shows the entire video of creator B in their reaction, then viewers won't have the need to watch the original video of creator B. This takes away any view and engagement creator B could've had.

Another issue is having to sync the watch-along. It's hard when you enter late into the stream and the streamer is already watching a movie. Even with a timer, it can be difficult to know if you're synced up with them.

Johanna only mentioned live events, but we think this could go further into VODs. It can help with the issues of creators "stealing content," but only if it's implemented correctly and the information is widely spread. It could even boost rental or sales of movies on YouTube.

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