TikTok eyes 60-minute video uploads, drawing ‘mini YouTube’ criticism

It’s official. TikTok is going longform. The application, which is facing a potential ban in the U.S., confirmed to TechCrunch on May 16 that it was testing the ability for users to upload 60-minute videos. Purportedly, this feature is available to a limited group of users, as the platform confirmed to the outlet that it won’t be making the feature widely available anytime soon.

The feature was first discovered by social media consultant Matt Navarra. When TikTok first came out, it had a 15-second limit. This soon turned to 30, then 1 minute, then 3 minutes, and now, at present, TikToks can be up to 10 minutes long. This expanded timescale has been in place since February 2022, and people are certainly taking advantage of it.

Now, people are watching full TV shows and movies on TikTok, with NBCUniversal even uploading full episodes of Peacock sitcom Killing It to the platform (albeit, split into five full parts).

But some creators and experts aren’t so sure about this switch to longer-form content.

A ‘mini-YouTube’

“I feel like there are so many creators out there who came to TikTok because it was the short-form video app,” creator Nikki Apostolou said in an interview with CNN. “And now they want to be like ‘mini YouTube,’ and I feel like it leaves out creators who came there for the short-form content.”

Krysten Stein, a digital culture scholar at the University of Illinois-Chicago, told the outlet why she thinks TikTok is evolving into longer-form content.

“The model of the short-form video was really useful when TikTok first launched, they could get people really quickly on the platform, it’s continuous scrolling and it goes fast,” she said.

“I think TikTok is now [thinking], ‘We need to show [advertisers] that we can keep people staying on one video longer,’” Stein said. “But I’m interested to see how viewers are going to respond because what has kept people on the app is that the videos were short.”

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