TikTok-style video content is now more popular than long-form videos on YouTube.
Key details
An analytics study of content consumption shows that short-form video content continues to grow. YouTube Shorts rose 135% in the past year, accounting for 57% of the site’s traffic.
“Short-form content erupted in popularity when TikTok took over the world and spread the fun and playfulness of this content type. Since then, TikTok has also integrated longer-form video formats, but short videos still reign supreme,” says video trend follower Tubular.
Tubular’s study of social video trends offers a larger view of the current growth of niche communities, the interests of Gen Z audiences, and integration strategies for marketing and NFT (non-fungible tokens) sales.
Why it’s news
The demand for short-form video content has absolutely exploded. It is easy content to produce and the majority of it is organic, with 95% of the content coming from individual creators. YouTube and other apps are beginning to prioritize the content, although not at the expense of longer content.
“Short-form video is all about reach. Platforms have prioritized this content in algorithms to reach new followers and show up on discovery pages. Shared music tracks and trends also allow users to find new creators in alignment with their preferences,” says Tubular.
“Short form video is not entirely replacing longer form content. Longer videos still have their place on social video and only saw slight declines in viewership”
This explosion is creating opportunities for other social media apps to jump in on the success as well and take advantage of short-form content’s new popularity.
As we previously reported, social media apps are all looking for ways to integrate killer apps and popular concepts into existing social media apps. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have all added short-form video features to mimic TikTok, and Amazon has even experimented with the concept. Instagram most recently took criticism for attempting to clone a smaller app called BeReal.
Notable quote
“Call it the TikTok Effect. Google/Alphabet-owned YouTube has been trying to fend off the Chinese viral-video platform by putting a lot of emphasis on cultivating creators who post short-form content—defined as videos that run less than a minute—while also giving such content more real estate and prominence,” says AdAge.