“In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes,” Andy Warhol predicted back in 1968. In the 21st century, though, it’s not about minutes but seconds.
TikTok videos are designed to be short and the original default length for uploading was just 15 seconds. Rivals hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the short video format with music also set their base standard at 15 seconds.
The boom and bust of 2020 for TikTok
The first half of 2020 has been very good for the social video app from Internet company ByteDance, called TikTok. By the end of April, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimated that the app had been downloaded over 2 billion times on the App Store and Google Play.
The popularity of TikTok is a worldwide phenomenon. However, its presence in India is now curtailed because the government banned the app, as well as 58 others, on June 29, due to their links to China. That is quite a blow to the app in light of the huge user base in India.
Live Mint reports that there were over 200 million active users of the app in India, which represents a major chunk of its global hold. It was such a profitable market for ByteDance that last year the company said it planned to invest a billion dollars there.
The Indian market may now turn to one of the rival video platforms that have been trying to compete with TikTok. They include offerings from Instagram and YouTube.
The rise of the Reels rival
As TikTok’s growth has been impossible to ignore, Facebook attempted to launch its own version through Instagram under the name Reels. It first rolled out on a limited basis in Brazil in November 2019.
“Video and creation tools have really unlocked a surge of usage,” Instagram’s director of product, Robby Stein, told Variety.
Here’s TechCrunch’s short video demo of Instagram’s Reels:
A Later blog offers detailed instructions on how to set up your own 15 second video clip on Reels and set it to music. It also enumerated the features and editing tools it has in common with TikTok. Though it has yet to commit to a worldwide launch, Instagram expanded its rollout of Reels to France and Germany on June 24.
YouTube gets in the act
June 24 also happens to be the date of YouTube’s announcement that it would be testing a mobile feature for recording 15 second videos. The announcement didn’t give many details about this experiment. The full text is as follows:
Testing out a way to record multi-segment videos: We’re testing out a new way for creators to easily record multiple clips directly in the YouTube mobile app and upload as one video. If you’re in this experiment, you’ll see an option to ‘create a video’ in the mobile upload flow. Tap or hold the record button to record your first clip, then tap again or release the button to stop recording that clip. Repeat these steps until you’re done capturing footage up to a maximum length of 15 seconds. If you’d like to upload a longer video, you’ll still be able to do so by uploading from your phone gallery instead of recording through the app. We’re starting these experiments on mobile (both Android and iOS) with a small group of people while we gather feedback.
This an even more limited rollout than Instagram initially used for Reels, and it may be some time before YouTube decides to be more transparent about its plans to capitalize on its 15 second formula for success.
The timing of both YouTube’s announcement and the expansion of Reels is interesting in light of TikTok’s move just a day later.
TikTok means business
On June 25, TikTok unveiled a new site called TikTok for Business. The tagline is “Don’t Make Ads,” and it continues with “Make TikToks.” If you stay on the homepage long enough, you’ll see that it also offers several alternatives: “Make a new trend” or “Make someone’s day” or “Make it interesting” or “Make a connection.”
TikTok capitalizes on its trending popularity with this proposition for businesses:
A TechCrunch article offered details on various features TikTok offers like “Brand Takeovers,” which can be very short videos up to 5 seconds long or images. For those with more to say, there is the option for running up to a minute through “In-Feed Videos.” They can also choose to insert their logos or products in the foreground or background of videos with “Branded Effects.”
Brands also have the option to direct content creation with “Hashtag Challenges.” We saw an example of that in the #DistanceDance. As shoppable videos are becoming standard practice on other platforms, TikTok is also offering a shoppable feature to brands under “Hashtag Plus.”
It’s no wonder then that rival video platforms like Instagram and YouTube want to tap into such a potentially lucrative business model of selling brands on short videos with a variety of options beyond the standard sponsorship of content.
No doubt we will be seeing similar branding features on offer from Instagram and whatever YouTube decides to name its 15 second videos in the future if that experiment pans out.