ByteDance’s August report to staff says revenue grew 80% to $61.7B in 2021 but operating losses more than tripled to $7.15B as it spent heavily on growth (Salvador Rodriguez/Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Internal Meta documents detail Instagram’s struggle to compete with TikTok; users spend 17.6M hours per day watching Reels, far below TikTok’s 197.8M hours  —  Reels faces formidable competition from the leading short-video platform; creators follow the views

David Pierce / The Verge:
An interview with YouTube Shorts Director of Product Management Todd Sherman on UI challenges as YouTube rolls out the TikTok competitor to its TV apps  —  YouTube Shorts is working.  That much Todd Sherman knows for sure.  Sherman, the product manager behind YouTube’s endless-scrolling …

Karissa Bell / Engadget:
YouTube plans to expand its Partners Program to give a 45% cut of Shorts ad revenue to creators that have 10M views on Shorts within a 90-day period  —  YouTube just announced a major change to its Partner Program that will allow its short-form video creators to make a lot more money from its platform.

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
YouTube rolls out narration voiceovers for Shorts on iOS, a popular feature on TikTok  —  YouTube Shorts continues to compete with TikTok by adding loads of new features that are popular on the other app.  Today, the Google-owned platform is rolling out a narration voiceover feature on iOS, a tool that is already often used on TikTok.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Responding to user feedback, YouTube splits video content into three tabs on channel pages: Videos, Shorts, and Live  —  YouTube is rolling out a change impacting how videos appear on its platform.  The company today announced a redesign that now splits video content into three different tabs …

Zeke Faux / Bloomberg:
El Salvador’s Bitcoin “revolution” is failing miserably and behind the debacle are crypto evangelists from wealthier countries who cheered on President Bukele  —  On an estuary along the coast of El Salvador, a few miles west of the Conchagua volcano, about 70 families live in a settlement called Flor de Mangle.