Short-form video sharing platform TikTok isn’t so short anymore. On Monday, the company told TechCrunch it’s expanding its maximum video length upload to 10 minutes, a significant increase from its previous limit of three minutes. Move over dance videos and make way for long-winded rants and reaction videos.
In a statement sent to Gizmodo, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed the longer video length limit, saying the company hoped it would “unleash even more creative possibilities,” for TikTok creators.
The move marks TikTok’s latest, and possibly most substantial, pivot away from the confines of short content. Last July, TikTok increased its maximum video length to three minutes up from 60 seconds. Not long after that, the company started testing out five minute videos among some of its users but held off from rolling out the feature more widely. For some context, TikTok’s maximum video length was capped at just 15 seconds when the app first launched in 2016.
TikTok’s venture into longer and longer content comes as other social media companies are doing the opposite. Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat have all released their own types of TikTok clones in recent years, all with the goal of trying to tap into TikTok’s growing dominance, particularly among younger users.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expounded on the success of Reels, Instagram’s short-form TikTok-esque feature, during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call, saying it was the single greatest driver to Instagram growth. Zuckerberg referred to Reels as the “fastest-growing content format by far.” Oh, and Zuckerberg’s comparisons to TikTok weren’t subtle: the CEO mentioned the company by name five times during that fourth-quarter earnings call.
For TikTok, the new maximum video upload limit may put it in more direct competition with more entrenched video-sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo. That could increase TikTok’s popularity worldwide, which still trails behind Facebook and Instagram according to a recent eMarketer forecast.
On the flip side, the new lengthier videos could also open TikTok up to even more scrutiny around content moderation which, so far, has largely been aimed at sites hosting longer-form content.