The king of short-form videos wants a slice of YouTube’s market as they test 3-minute long videos, but does anyone want this?

TikTok is the social media platform of choice for much of the Gen Z demographic. Holding a huge stake in the social media market, only further pushed in 2020 by stay-at-home orders.

While there are many competitors out there hoping to get in on the vertically scrollable, algorithm driven, short-video market, TikTok totally dominates here against competition from Instagram Reels, Triller and maybe YouTube Shorts in the future.

Currently, users can upload 15-second or 60-second videos. However, these one-minute videos must be comprised of four lots of 15-second clips.

Recent news suggests TikTok are wanting to take some of YouTube’s market, as they test longer form videos. Social media commentator and consultant Matt Navarra on Twitter noted he had been granted early access to the feature:

It’s unclear how many people have early access to the feature. The longer videos uploaded are visible by all users, not just testers. There’s no indication that this feature will be fully rolled out to all uploaders. That largely depends on how the testing phase goes.

The potential new feature poses a few questions should it be implemented to all users. Will the longer videos be integrated on the main feed? Would we know how long videos are before watching them? Would this feature also see playback control implemented? Will the 15-second clip record limit still be in effect?

This could be a clever move, but could equally backfire on them. This really becomes a question of, do people go to TikTok because of the clever personalized feed of videos that interest them or for short videos? The majority of responses online appear to be negative, with people specifically going to TikTok for short videos, but testing will let TikTok know for sure. Users currently seem quite content with YouTube and Facebook for longer videos.