This is a very interesting evolution that says a lot about the current technological space: While some other apps are copying TikTok in the hope of grabbing at least part of the popularity of the short video market, TikTok itself is also offering longer videos to better compete with it. YouTube. This blurs the boundaries of services and makes them similar to each other, depriving each of them of their individuality.

What is known

Judging by when the first reports appeared, Testing started only yesterday, May 16. This will allow developers not only to check whether the function is working correctly, but also to understand users’ attitudes towards this change. Until now, the longest videos technically possible on the service were only three minutes long.

This isn’t the first time TikTok has changed time limits for video content:

• At the app’s launch, the video could only be 15 seconds in length, which turned out to be enough for it to become wildly popular around the world.
• The current 3-minute limit was introduced years later and remained for some time.
• Later, the time was extended to 10 minutes.
• The company later reversed this decision and once again limited the time to just three minutes.

Small changes in video duration can certainly impact the course of the service and the type of content it offers. But supporting an entire watch is a much bigger deal, which is could lead to a major transformation of the platform and how it is used.

In fact, the authors constantly asked the developers to allow longer videos to be uploaded. They want more time for things like cooking demonstrations, beauty classes, educational lesson plans, sketch comedy and more. The company says the purpose of increasing the limit is to give authors the opportunity to try new or expanded content types with more flexibility.

If TikTok follows in YouTube’s footsteps, it could become the American video hosting service’s first serious rival in recent years. However, there is no guarantee that the company will not reverse this change, as it did with the previous 10-minute videos. After all, users are used to short videos on TikTok and the quick and mindless consumption of content, so they may not like the emergence of hour-long formats in the feed.