After the controversial move to 10 minutes, TikTok is now testing 15-minute videos on its platform in certain countries. The social network continues its efforts to allow more flexibility to its creators, with a barely hidden objective: to compete with YouTube on its own territory.
We were first treated to 3-minute videos. Then the limit increased to 10 minutes. The days when TikTok, which was then called Musical.ly, only allowed 15-second videos on its platform now seem a long way off. Especially since the Chinese social network is preparing to drive the point home a little further. Now, in some countries, creators can post videos lasting up to 15 minutes. It is therefore only a matter of time before the new product is deployed globally.
However, in its early days in the West, it was precisely its one-minute limit that quickly attracted millions, then billions, of users. Some also saw it as a certain return to the Vine format, the application which disappeared as quickly as it appeared, which imposed a limit of 6 seconds on its users’ videos. The announcement of the 3-minute videos then created controversy, with some fearing that they would lose the very essence of the application.
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However, two years later, it is clear that TikTok is still here — and more powerful than ever. Users ended up getting used to its longer formats, sometimes to the point of transforming well-established uses on the Internet. Many of them explain in particular that the social network has now replaced Google in their web searches.
This new increase in the maximum duration of videos is therefore only the logical continuation of a barely hidden strategy from TikTok: grab market share from YouTube. By authorizing longer videos, the platform opens the door to other formats for creators, until now “forced” to stay on YouTube to publish the content they want.
If YouTube clearly has no reason to be ashamed of the success of its Shorts, its barely hidden in-house copy of TikTok, the site clearly has to fear for its hitherto indisputable hegemony in the world of long videos. TikTok has not yet announced a global rollout date for its 15-minute videos.
Source: TechCrunch