San Bruno, California - Social media platforms have announced many suspiciously similar services this year. Now, YouTube has finally perfected its Shorts feature and is launching it the world over as a product directly competing with TikTok.

Instagram's Reels feature has already taken on TikTok, but YouTube seems more than game to get in the ring.

The Google subsidiary is pitching Shorts as being better than TikTok for creating and consuming short-form videos because it can more seamlessly blend with other YouTube services, The Verge wrote.

TikTok currently allows audio overlay from existing videos and songs, but Shorts will allow overlays from any existing YouTube video, though the company has yet to explain how that works as far as licensing and copyright rules.

TikTok's announcement of Jump to add interactive features to videos still keeps the brand feature-wise ahead of Shorts for now, though Shorts creators can link back to other videos, similar to Duets in TikTok.

To encourage content creation, 9To5Google reports that The YouTube Shorts Fund will offer compensation based on certain conditions, but like TikTok's Creator Fund, the money is only available to video creators in certain countries.

Facebook too has a short videos feature very similar to TikTok, but offers no dedicated creation portal.

The Verge also pointed out the irony that while YouTube has made a significant investment in producing the Shorts feature to compete with TikTok, TikTok is also making large investments in trying to offer more YouTube-like features such as three-minute videos and TV-ready apps.