TikTok wants to monopolize everything. It’s the undisputed king when it comes to vertical videos right now and has already taken its first steps to tackle other platforms. TikTok Now is their alternative to compete with BeReal, it has its own story system and now it’s all going horizontal video format. But dethroning YouTube will not be easy, and there are many reasons to think so.

vertical yes horizontal. TikTok is testing a new full-screen landscape mode with a closed group of users. modus operandi is the most common in such tests. In principle videos are displayed vertically in the feed, but as long as the video in question is recorded in a horizontal aspect ratio, there will be an option to convert them to landscape format in full screen.

The move makes sense, considering that not so long ago TikTok increased the time limit for its videos to 10 minutes (although the movement never penetrated the platform). What seems clear is that TikTok wants to maintain its lead in watch time (it has already surpassed YouTube here), and long horizontal videos could be a new asset to solidify its numbers.

But TikTok isn’t all about long videos. In addition to a sickly tuned algorithm, one of the keys to TiTok’s success is the brevity of the format. fast content, fast food visual that we can consume dozens of videos and themes in one sitting. The horizontal format is a more relaxed, different approach. Videos up to 10 minutes long didn’t work, and there’s little reason to think horizontal ones would.

YouTube shorts on TikTok, TikToks in shorts. The war of form creates an inevitable result: recycled content. The vast majority of Reels and Short Videos are videos downloaded directly from TikTok. If TikTok opens the door to landscape videos, there’s a good chance we’ll have videos saved for YouTube on TikTok. Having everything (portrait and landscape content, stories and BeReal integration) seemed like a good idea. But the low adoption of stories on Instagram’s IGTV or TikTok is proof that this is not the case. Consumers continue to demand special applications.

Creators create for money and the money is on YouTube. Speaking of pay-per-view only (campaigns aside), YouTube is better at monetization. TikTok algorithm makes it much easier to go viral, so the playback value is negligible compared to YouTube. A creator with millions of views on TikTok will always earn less than the equivalent views on YouTube, so there’s not much reason to switch completely from platform to platform.

TikTok is undoubtedly a good way to achieve the opposite: for creators to attract subscribers to their YouTube channels through different connecting paths to other platforms TikTok offers.

Ambition can eat up TikTok. There is no news or official date that the horizontal videos will finally be brought to life, but they point to the truth. TikTok’s greed can eat away at it and turn the app into a mixed bag of apps that have made it lose focus on what drove it to success: short videos, short videos, and more short videos in vertical format.