TikTok encourages longer, landscape videos
After leading the short-form video race, encouraging quick, vertical videos, TikTok look to compete with YouTube as they explore new formats.
Just one week after Matt Navarra announced TikTok was testing 30-minute videos, Navarra shares more news from TikTok. TikTok has started pushing alerts to some users, incentivizing them to post longer, horizontal videos, with “boosted videos” for the first 72 hours of posting. The message reads:
Landscape videos, where the width is greater than the height and are over 1 minute in length, are the only ones eligible to receive increased views.
Presumably this is to encourage more YouTube creators to port videos right over, rather than short clips, that often require extra work when it comes to cropping vertically. While it makes sense for TikTok to tackle a new format, it does pose a number of questions. Will landscape videos be separated into their own feed? If not, things could get confusing when it comes to flipping your phone to go back to scrolling. Will different formats be favoured by different creators/genres of videos/trends? Will this shift allow TikTok to truly compete with YouTube?
I wouldn’t expect this to significantly change TikTok. Short, portrait clips will likely be the predominant format on TikTok for the foreseeable future.