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PALO ALTO, California — As competition in user-generated videos heats up, TikTok, the online platform known for hosting super-short movies, is creeping into longer-format terrain. Users will be able to upload 3-minute clips, triple the platform’s original restriction, according to the business, which is controlled by China’s ByteDance. As part of its bigger push into the longer-form video industry, ByteDance introduced a web version of Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — last week. The move comes as the distinction between short- and long-form video platforms continues to blur, with competitors like YouTube and Instagram adding their own TikTok-like features. Since last year, TikTok has been testing the 3-minute video feature with a small group of creators on the platform. The firm said on Thursday that in the coming weeks, everyone on TikTok would be able to produce lengthier films. “We’re excited to see how people continue to entertain and inspire with a few more seconds — and an universe of creative possibilities,” Drew Kirchhoff, a TikTok product manager, said in a corporate announcement. On its other apps, ByteDance has been testing the longer-form video functionality. In 2019, the firm increased the length limit on Douyin from 15 seconds to 1 minute. In 2020, the firm permitted certain authors to publish videos that were up to 5 minutes long. The web version, which was released last week, has more long-form videos than the mobile app. “Douyin has amassed a large number of diverse contents. Many educational movies are longer than five minutes and shot horizontally. For watching those videos, the web version is preferable “Last week, the business told Chinese media. While many people associate TikTok with short, viral videos, the popularity of short videos among millennials and Generation Z around the world has prompted other businesses to join the fray. Last year, Facebook-owned Instagram debuted Reels, a feature that allows users to produce short films, and in 2020, YouTube launched YouTube Shorts, a direct competitor to TikTok. The turn by TikTok and Douyin in the opposite direction, away from their original super-short style and toward lengthier videos, is expected to increase competition in the creator-generated video industry./nRead More

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