Research on the Popularity of Short Video Streaming Platforms
Short video streaming platforms have seen a rise over the past few years. Over the past decade, we have seen that people are spending more time on smartphones watching videos. Earlier, people used to spend hours watching videos on platforms like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, prime videos, Hulu, and many more. With more easily available Internet across the globe, people have started transitioning from traditional T.V. to these O.T.T platforms. A few of the reasons why people choose O.T.T over traditional T.V. is the ease that it provides to a user, the vast options that are available to the user, and many more. But over the past few years, people are moving from platforms like Netflix and Prime Videos, which normally have a series/movie that has an average runtime of ~45mins, to YouTube, where a video has an average length of 10mins, to the very popular short video streaming/social media platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok, etc., where the duration of a video is in the range of 10~30 seconds.
In a report by Washington Post, they mentioned that: “Its dominance, as estimated by the internet firms Cloudflare, Data.ai, and Sensor Tower, is hard to overstate. TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google’s. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million of them are in the United States, roughly a third of the country. The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day — more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined. Two-thirds of American teens use the app, and 1 in 6 say they watch it “almost constantly,” a Pew Research Center survey in August found; usage of Facebook among the same group has been cut in half since 2015. A report this summer by the parental-control tool Qustodio found that TikTok was both the most-used social media app for children and the one parents were most likely to block. And while half of TikTok’s U.S. audience is younger than 25, the app is winning grown-ups’ attention, too; the industry analyst eMarketer expects its over-65 audience will increase this year by nearly 15 percent. (AARP last year even unveiled a how-to guide.)” (Source: Washington Post)
The main purpose of this research is to find out why people are transitioning toward these platforms. Is it because of the short length of the videos or is it because of better content? People tend to spend more time on anything only if they find something very interesting, so my first assumption will be that people are liking the content that is available to them on these platforms. The advanced algorithms that are developed by these platforms also track your activity and based on your behavior, clicks, and activity on the app, it suggests feeds and videos that are more likely to be clicked by the user. “More than just a hit, TikTok has blown up the model of what a social network can be. Silicon Valley taught the world a style of online connectivity built on hand-chosen interests and friendships. TikTok doesn’t care about those. Instead, it unravels for viewers an endless line of videos selected by its algorithm, then learns a viewer’s tastes with every second they watch, pause, or scroll. You don’t tell TikTok what you want to see. It tells you. And the internet can’t get enough.” (Source: Washington Post)
These platforms are showing what the user wants to see or we can say what the user will like eventually. The algorithm suggests videos or posts based on what the user saw in the past or interacted the most with. For example, my Instagram feed is filled with dogs, and the reason is I just like watching dogs (I believe everyone does ), and now I can spend some time just scrolling through the same type of dog-related videos, which will eventually feed the algorithm my preferences and engagement counts, that were linked to Dogs, or British Bulldogs in general, cause I will click on any post or reel that has a British Bulldog in it. But moving ahead from the cute dog attack on social media, this algorithm can also lead to influencing the youth in supporting extremist or even an unwanted or unaccepted political ideology.
Meta has been accused of manipulating the user feeds during any election and the same allegations are now being made against TikTok for spreading the CCPs agenda across the globe. As most people may know that many mainstream social media platforms are banned in China and TikTok is the only Chinese social media platform that is used by many people across the world there have been numerous allegations against TikTok for stealing data to spreading CCPs propaganda. Although I have never used TikTok, so cannot verify this claim personally here is a link to one of the reports by Bloomberg claiming: “A Chinese government entity responsible for public relations attempted to open a stealth account on TikTok targeting Western audiences with propaganda, according to internal messages seen by Bloomberg.” (Source: Bloomberg)
So, considering all the factors that I mentioned above, a large-scale study about the popularity of these short-video streaming apps will help us understand what exactly is attracting users to these apps. From different age groups to different genders, everyone is covered, and everyone has a different preference and choice, but the main reason why everyone is still sticking to these apps is still unclear.
