TikTok or TedTok?
Have you ever felt old?
Well, I don’t know about you but I do feel old sometimes. With the development of technology, everything moves incredibly fast and we just have to adapt to it. As the social media generation is booming, thousands of platforms are being created every day. As an audience, we actively select the platforms that are entertaining, convenient, and, of course, have quality content. Not only we, as humans, are developing, learning new skills, but our demand also goes up. And that leads to those social media platforms also having to continuously update, to match our needs and deliver good experiences for users, both current and prospective. With that being said, I have to constantly update myself with the new social media platform, or when new features just got developed and I need to update the app. Sometimes I just felt so behind on all of these new platforms.
Is it just me or does everyone around me go on TikTok?
As an ex-heavy Facebook user, I actively use the platform every day, or every hour if I can. My screen time for Facebook for 2020 was 5 hours per day. However, with trends coming back and forth, many of my friends switch to Instagram for its aesthetic vibes and photo-sharing centric; I have eventually adapted and shifted to Instagram, to be able to see their stories on a new platform. And I wasn’t alone. 47.6% of users use social media to stay in touch with friends and family. You might be wondering, how about the rest?
Apparently, the second and third reason why a person is using a social media platform is just simply filling up spare time, and reading new stories. And TikTok, one of the most popular platforms with over 1 billion users, fits perfectly in to serve that need of the audience.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a quick entertainment site that provides content that easily captures audience attention in short form, with addictive videos, never-ending streams, and algorithms tailored to users' interests. With the initial limit for each video being 15 seconds, content creators have to be full of creativity to successfully tell their stories in an entertaining way. With endless features such as the library of special effects, AR tools, huge music catalogs, content creators are never bored or run out of ways to be creative.
Recently, with the newest update, TikTok announced to increase their video limit to 10 minutes, not even 1 year after they increase it to 3 minutes, to “unleash more creative possibilities.” Through increasing video limit throughout the years (15 sec, then 30, 60 seconds, and now 40x the initial time), and offering longer live-stream in feed, it is obvious that TikTok is aiming for longer content and keeping people within the app longer to increase their revenue stream.
Compare to its competitor, which are YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, they are completely integrated into the opposite side. Seeing the success of TikTok and its short video form, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat all follow TikTok’s formula to generate shorter video and content (YouTube’s Shorts, Instagram’s Reels, Snapchat’s Spotlight with 60 seconds or less for short videos).
Why?
For entertainment platforms, most of its revenues are coming from ads. Take YouTube for an example, in 2020, they generated 28.8 billion in ad revenues, through their beginning, mid-roll, and ending ads, since they allow ads for videos that are 8 minutes or longer. For TikTok, with shorter video and content, revenues generated for them would never come close. The company has the $500 million creator fund, plus the option to tip and donate, but it would not be enough to generate earnings for the company. Looking at Vines, another very successful and popular short-video platform back then but could not stand against the flow of money without ads, and eventually has to shut down. What TikTok is doing makes sense to keep the company alive and better generate revenues.
What do people think?
For me, everybody is using a different social media or entertainment platform for different purposes. Each platform has its own differentiator, its signature features. And for TikTok, it’s always the short video, the creativity, and the entertaining content that doesn’t require a lot of effort and energy to watch and think about it. For me, whenever I go on TikTok, I’m a no-brainer. I just want to relax and watch some funny, interesting videos of people doing things and not think much about it.
The increase in video length will somewhat make TikTok goes directly into YouTube’s territory. Although it helps the company better compete with YouTube, but will also make it lose its core value, which is short, creative, and entertaining content. I think TikTok’s audience will be less interested and quickly become bored of this longer content. People go on TikTok to relax, not to watch a whole long “TedTok” show.
How do brands and content creators benefit from this?
For content creators, this must be somewhat good news for them as they will have more time and flexibility when filming. There will also be room for more creativity as content creators can do more on TikTok with the new allowed time.
This update will definitely create some challenges for the content creator and brands since the human attention span is short (as we all know), and this update will not help content creators fully capture and attract their viewers. However, for me, I think this will be a real achievement for content creators, especially the ones with good storytelling skills. No matter how short or how long the video is, as long as brands and content creators utilize ways to created interesting stories and fascinate the viewers, they will still follow along with your video (read my last blog to read tips on how to fascinate your audience). Take Kandace Banks, a very famous TikToker, as an example. She utilizes TikTok to create a drama and story of herself as the main character. Although the series is super long and she has to separate each episode out within TikTok limit video length, but her audience is still following along with each and every episode, and they claimed that it’s not a problem for them. So, for brands and content creators like Kandace, this will be a great opportunity to expand and create consistency in their stories.
On the other side, what I really like about TikTok is its ability to engage users within the app. For some brands, whenever a product/service got released, one way to engage with their audience is creating a challenge on TikTok. With short videos, quick dance moves, cool activities, and addictive music, TikTok’s challenge is the most popular form of content that generated interaction with the brand and helps increase brands awareness. And it is super easy for the audience to take place in those challenges via TikTok; just a few simple clicks, choose the designated sounds, film yourself making some cool moves, and voila — you are set to participate in their challenge!
Of course, with the longer video, the purpose of it will no longer focus on the engagement, interaction with the audience, but rather on the storytelling aspect of the brands and delivering some good information/content to the viewers. However, this doesn’t mean brands cannot engage with their consumers via shorter videos and challenges. They can still choose to opt for shorter videos. This increase in video length will only open up for brands on ways of how to appeal, represent themselves in the digital world and in front of their audience. The choice is still within the brands. They can now choose to target different types of consumers via different methods, or mix and match them.
So, if you are one of the content creators, how would you develop your brand with this new update?
How are you going to utilize this update to fascinate your audience?
