Short videos get killed by the YouTube algorithm since it’s difficult to show ads.

Right! Exactly!

That’s why I’m curious if it’s possible for creators to make 1-2 sentence videos that are profitable enough for the platform those videos are on that they can pay the creators well.

I think that's where TikTok and other emerging video platforms might have an edge.

Imgur includes a fair bit of video with roughly a 60s cap.

Monetisation seems mostly to be based around branding / influencing.

They do youtube shorts for 1 minute videos

Pretty soon the industry will be reduced to bunches of three preteen content creators in a trenchcoat.

Yeah, TikTok.

Hahaha, I knew this comment was coming. Fun fact: TikTok is experimenting with longer videos. I think they’re up to 3min already.

Eventually all these things converge on an identical feature set, I guess.

I never understood why. Look at Snapchat: when it was just 1:1 messages that disappeared people got that. People liked it, used it, tried to get their friends on it, and so-on.

Now it’s instagram, so why not just use instagram?

By moving away from their market differentiator they made themselves replaceable.