Should you be filming 10-minute videos on TikTok?
It seems like every app wants to be like TikTok nowadays with its snappy videos and trending sounds. But TikTok has other plans.
TikTok announced at the end of February 2022 that it was going to offer creators the option to film videos as long as 10 minutes. It’s a big move for a social platform that is known for short videos. There are many TikTokers who believe the move is in an effort to viral YouTube where long-form content is commonplace and in certain niches, expected. Already, users on TikTok are speculating that the app is prioritizing longer videos because many users are experiencing low video views for videos under a minute.
I’ve personally uploaded two different videos to test out whether the rumors are true. I filmed a 1-minute video about the internet’s reaction to Kim Kardashian's “work more” comments in a Variety Magazine interview on a Friday evening. The video only got about a thousand views, which is not a good showing on my channel because I have about 70,000 followers.
So the following day, Saturday midday, I posted a 3-minute video that was a longer version of Kim Kardashian's “work more” controversy. That video also underperformed, with less than a thousand views. Of course, there are other factors to consider when assessing performance metrics, like when the video was posted, but overall, I didn’t see any evidence on my channel that longer videos are being prioritized by TikTok.
I personally don’t think TikTok is introducing 10-minute videos to rival Youtube. I think TikTok wants to be more like Youtube in the sense that it wants to monetize more of the content on its app with advertising. If you go onto Youtube, you’ll find videos that are anywhere from 2 minutes to hours long. For instance, I recently published a 17-minute long tutorial on Youtube about how to turn a hand-drawn work of art into an NFT design using Canva. I would have never posted or made a video like that on any other platform. And the reason I feel like I can make videos that long on YouTube isn’t because I have the space to make them as long as I want. Rather, I feel like I have the opportunity to be compensated for my time through YouToube’s monetization program.
Youtube creators who are successful at monetizing their videos can earn millions of dollars thanks to YouTube’s advertising program. However, TikTok’s creator fund doesn’t work in the same way. That’s led to a lot of frustration for TikTok creators who have gained millions of videos but earned only a few dollars on the platforms. When TikTok pays creators from the creator fund, it is essentially pulling from a limited pool of money that the company gives to creators based on their video views and watch times. And as more creators join the fund, the smaller TikTok’s payouts become, critics have said.
TikTok however, has denied these claims, saying there’s plenty of money to go around. In the summer of 2020, the company said they were expecting to grow the creator fund to over $1 billion in the U.S. in the next 3 years and double that figure globally. Since then, the company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, has ballooned in growth. Increasing its revenue 70 percent year-over-year in 2021 to $58 billion, according to Reuters.
However, that revenue growth hasn’t translated to higher payouts for TikTok creators. It’s caused some creators like author Hank Green, who has more than 6 million followers on TikTok, to flee the platform and join Youtube because he claims that it doesn’t financially make sense for him to be spending so much time on TikTok’s platform if the creator fund doesn’t compensate creators fairly.
"Literally, when TikTok becomes more successful, TikTokers become less successful,” Green said in a video that has gained hundreds of thousands of views.
I, myself, have about 70,000 followers and although I have plenty of videos that have garnered millions of views, I have only made about $40 from the creator fund since I joined in late 2021. (I’ve made more money through Google Ad Sense on this blog.)
Now that TikTok is introducing 10-minute videos, there are many questions about whether TikTok creators will be compensated in the same way as Youtube creators. I suspect not because where exactly is TikTok getting that revenue from? YouTube, which is owned by Google, has a thriving, multi-billion dollar ad revenue business. For instance, it’s common for popular videos to rank on Google’s search engine, thus driving SEO traffic to the creators' videos. Youtube videos are also easy to embed into websites and blogs and are generally much easier to discover. Whereas, TikTok videos are hard to discover on the platform, and their embedding feature isn’t compatible with many websites and platforms. In addition, Youtube advertisers can buy programmatic ads, display ads, banner ads and more to be featured alongside popular Youtube videos. TikTok doesn’t have this infrastructure – yet.
Slowly, I think TikTok will integrate more ways for advertisers to participate on its platform beyond branded content, sponsored posts, and sponsored hashtags. But it will obviously take time.
Even if TikTokers have the option of posting longer videos, there are no clear answers about whether creators will be compensated for their time. But in a world where social media popularity is a form of currency, maybe some creators don’t really mind not getting paid for their time and effort.
