TikTok might be adding up to 30-minute long videos
Image credit: Good Faces
The world’s favourite app for short videos is exploring longer form content, potentially up to the length of TV episodes.
It feels like just weeks ago we were wondering how 3-minute long videos would fare on TikTok. The video platform became one of the world’s most popular apps with a focus on 1-minute long and shorter videos. Nowadays, videos on TikTok can be up to 10 minutes.
In a potentially massive shift from their humble beginnings, TikTok are reportedly testing videos that are as long as 30 minutes. In a post on LinkedIn, Social Media Consultant Matt Navarra shares a screenshot seemingly of the TikTok app introducing the 30-minute cap.
Navarra said he spotted the announcement in the TikTok beta app earlier in the week. It’s a dramatic move towards becoming more of a general video app than just a quickfire, short-form content platform.
It also represents a clear step towards fiercer competition for YouTube. Whilst YouTube have successfully entered the short, vertical video landscape with YouTube Shorts, TikTok are now coming the other way with long-form videos. This will allow for in-depth tutorials, discussions, interviews, and much more. But do users want it?
TikTok have been pushing forward with new features to enhance their app recently. They’ve begun testing AI-generated songs that users can create to soundtrack their videos. They’ve also been looking at an auto-scroll feature that lets users watch through the feed hands-free, showing that they still want to promote short videos.
In terms of extending the potential length of videos, TikTok have been allowing up to 20-minute videos for premium content. In fact, they’ve been putting an emphasis on longer content recently. Early last year, TikTok told creators that they would need to “create and publish high-quality, original content longer than one minute” to receive compensation through their Creator Fund.