Youtube is the most popular video-streaming and sharing website in the world. We all use the Youtube domain or app to watch songs, trailers, and all kinds of videos. There has been another URL that you might get confused with which is youtu.be. Apparently, there is not much difference between the two URLs.
Youtube.com vs youtu.be
The main difference between Youtube.com vs Youtu.be is that Youtube.com is a top-level domain while Youtu.be is a shortened URL for youtube. Youtu.be is not a top-level domain(TLD). It is specifically specified as a country domain. It’s ccTLD i.e. country code top-level domain. The country youtu.be is specified for is Belgium.
Youtube has a popular top-level domain that can be used worldwide. Indeed, It is the most visited website of the world. This online video-sharing platform was launched in February 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. In 2006, Google get hold of Youtube.
In 2009, Google launched the shortened URL, youtu.be.Youtu.be will provide the same video streaming service to you. In fact, it will take you to the same homepage of youtube. And you will see the same website in the address bar. Youtu.be is not another domain. It’s just like an abbreviation for youtube.
Comparison Table Between Youtube.com and Youtu.be
| Parameters of Comparison | Youtube.com | Youtu.be |
| Type of Domain | It is a Top-level domain, uses .com domain. | It is a Country-code top-level domain. Uses .be ccTLD domain. |
| Platform | Video sharing popular platform | A shortened URL for Youtube, which will take you to the same page. |
| Specification | It is Globally registered. | Specified to the country, Belgium. |
| Year of Launch | Youtube was launched in 2005 | The shortened URL youtu.be was launched in 2009. |
| Purpose | Youtube was launched to be a video sharing platform | Youtu.be URL was launched to protect the domain and not let anyone else misuse it. |
What is Youtube.com?
Youtube is an American social media Platform. It is a video streaming as well as a sharing platform. You can all kinds of videos like music, comedy, movie and TV series trailers, kids videos, educational academic videos, short films, documentaries, etc. And you can watch live streams as well. All the leading companies like T series, Disney, etc share and launch their new videos on Youtube. People can earn money through youtube by sharing videos. The more subscribers on the channel and views on a video, the more money you can get.
Youtube is a big socially formed platform with a billion monthly users. It has billions of hours of content on thousands of different topics. You can watch many free videos and can rent movies as well, like or dislike videos, comment your thoughts, add videos to watch later, make playlists, etc. Indeed, you can change the resolution according to your comfort. However, Youtube doesn’t show illegitimate content. It has censorship and cuts.
After Google purchased Youtube, youtube is not limited to its app and website, you can also link it to other services like Twitter, Discord, and Nintendo. Companies use youtube as a platform to market their products and services. Multimillionaire celebrities too use youtube to share their videos and interests.
What is Youtu.be?
Youtu.be is a shortened URL for youtube.com. The domain Youtu.be is owned by youtube as well. This URL is not so much different from youtube.com. This will also take you to youtube’s website. The only difference is that this domain is a country code top-level domain which is specified to Belgium. However, it is not specified that other countries cant use this domain. Google has registered this domain for a global purpose. ccTLDs can be registered for any purpose by anyone around the world.
The URL may be shortened for two reasons. The one reason can be that other people cant take the URL and confuse people with it. People can use the URL to make people think that it’s youtube and hack other computers or inject malware into them. It can be so misleading so youtube owned the URL to protect the domain and other reasons can follow the trend of using domain hacks.
Each video is given a different URL that has many characters. Shortening the URL will help in shortening the URLs of the videos as well. As of now, by launching Youtu.be, youtube has cut short the URL by 15 characters. Twitter also uses this strategy.
Main Differences Between Youtube.com and Youtu.be
- Youtube.com is the main popular video streaming platform while Youtu.be is the shortened URL for youtube itself.
- Youtube.com is a top-level domain while youtu.be is a county code high-level domain.
- Youtube.com has .com domain which is a commercial entity worldwide while youtu.be has .be domain which is specified to the country of Belgium.
- Youtu.be domain name was launched by google in 2009 to protect the domain from being misused.
- Youtu.be is used to shorten the URL and make it easy for people to remember. Shorten URL will help youtube to shorten the URL of the specific videos as well. Youtu.be will also take you to the youtube’s main page.
Conclusion
Youtu.be is just another domain for Youtube. Youtu.be will take you to the main homepage of youtube. There is no difference between the two URLs despite the fact that Youtu.be has been created to shorten the URLs. Youtube uses a top-level domain, however, youtu.be uses country code top-level domain which is specified for the country Belgium. And even though it is country code HLD, it can still be used by everyone not by just the citizens of Belgium.
You can use any of these two domains to go to the homepage of youtube. It is common to use other shortened URLs of the main URL to make it easy and lead people to their sites by using these shortened sites. It helps to create a safe passage so that other people cant misuse the name of the domain in any other way. As people can use any other domain which contains the main name anyhow to hack and take advantage. This way youtube owns the other domain name too and people can’t be misled.
References
- https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4842-6672-4
- https://eprints.qut.edu.au/46719/