Warner Bros. Discovery is adding HBO Max Shorts, a vertical video feed meant to push viewers toward shows and movies inside HBO Max. The feature matters less because short video is novel, and more because another major streaming app is borrowing the phone-native feed format that TikTok made impossible for product managers to ignore.
WBD says the new feed will live behind an icon in the app’s bottom navigation bar. It will serve vertical videos pulled from the HBO Max catalog, including trailers, clips and bonus material. The company says the feed will be personalized using a viewer’s watch history.
From a clip, users will be able to start watching the related show or movie immediately or save it to their list for later, according to WBD. That makes the feed a discovery layer, not a separate short-form entertainment product. The point is to turn a few seconds of vertical video into a full-length stream inside the same app.
What is HBO Max Shorts?
HBO Max Shorts is a mobile vertical feed of promotional and related videos from HBO Max programming. It is designed to help subscribers find something to watch by showing short clips and then giving them a direct path into the full title.
WBD says the first test will reach select iOS users in the United States. The company says the feature will later expand to more devices and markets, though it did not give a broader rollout date in its announcement.
How does Warner Bros. Discovery make the clips?
WBD says HBO Max Shorts uses an in-house AI tool alongside human editors. According to the company, the tool uses machine learning and scene-level metadata to scan thousands of hours of programming and propose scenes that might work as discovery clips.
Human HBO Max editors then choose which clips should appear in the feed, WBD says. The selected material is converted into a vertical format for playback in the new experience. In other words, the software helps find candidates, while people still make the programming call, at least as WBD describes the process.
The company also says HBO Max Shorts will later add sports content and adjust as people use it. That last part is standard feed logic: the more a viewer interacts, the more signals the service can use to decide what to show next.
Which streaming apps already use vertical feeds?
HBO Max is not first to this particular trough. Netflix, Disney Plus and Peacock already offer vertical, TikTok-like video feeds for surfacing movies and shows, according to The Verge and The Hollywood Reporter. Streaming services have spent years pretending browsing rows of rectangles is fine; mobile feeds are the admission that it often is not.
WBD is also testing what it calls an experimental conversational search feature for HBO Max. The company says that search tool lets users ask for content with natural-language queries, and that it is initially available to adult users on Android in the United States. Netflix is testing a similar search feature, according to The Verge.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
