Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlights, and Facebook Stories all feature shorter video formats because they want to be TikTok … but TikTok wants to be YouTube? We all want what we can’t have. The ByteDance-owned app rolled out a maximum video length of three minutes last July, up from its original one-minute time constraint. Now, TikTok has tripled its maximum video length, allowing creators to post videos running to up to ten minutes. A TikTok representative said they hope it will “unleash even more creative possibilities for our creators around the world,” in a statement shared by Variety. Social-media consultant Matt Navarra confirmed the global rollout of ten-minute TikToks in a Monday morning Tweet, before joking that users will now be able to watch even “longer videos full of misinformation.”
With the new time allotments, TikTok will be able to compete with longer-form content sites like YouTube by compelling users to spend more time on the app, as if it weren’t addictive enough. However, lengthier TikToks could alienate a younger audience that was drawn to the platform bv its bite-size format. The switch also has the potential to mess with TikTok’s impeccable algorithm; The Verge reported that longform content could limit how much data the app can collect on user preferences. At least for now, users can finally condense their exhaustive ten-part true-crime investigations into a single video.