As YouTube’s chief business officer, Robert Kyncl oversees global partnerships with media companies, artists and creators. Those internet personalities are starting to gravitate to a product YouTube rolled out nearly a year ago: a quick and easy way to produce short-form videos, like the ones popularized by TikTok. 

“That was a missing format for us,” Kyncl said in an interview with The Information. “We were missing the easy-to-use, low table-stakes format. That’s very critical to the next generation of creators who are coming up.”