TikTok is currently testing 60-minute video uploads, in its never ending quest to be more like YouTube. The feature is currently available to a limited group of users in “select markets”, the company told TechCrunch.
There are currently no immediate plans to make this available more widely, but the idea is clear here – with longer-form content, TikTok can attract some YouTube viewers on top of its usual audience who’s looking for short-form videos to scroll through.
At launch, TikTok had a 15-minute upload limit (much like YouTube used to back in the day), but this has steadily increased over the past few years. TikTok says that it often hears from creators who want more time for things like cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational lesson plans, comedic sketches, and more. So this is its answer to those requests.
According to the company, the purpose of the increased time limit is to give creators the opportunity to experiment with new or expanded types of content that otherwise wouldn’t be possible – or would be cumbersome to view if you need to go through multiple videos.
This also opens the gate for full episodes of TV shows to be posted to the platform – last year Peacock made the first episode of a show available on TikTok but it was broken up into five parts. If something like this happens again, you won’t have to jump through the same hoops.
TikTok has also been testing a horizontal full screen mode with video-scrubbing thumbnails to complete its YouTube-ification.
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