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Dec. 21 (NBD) – Chinese social media app TikTok is testing the new function to allow users to record videos longer than 2 minutes, news outlet 36Kr reported.

TikTok's ordinary users can only make 15 seconds videos but accounts with over 1000 followers are able to add contents with the length of 59 seconds.

ByteDance, owner of TikTok, is extending its presence to the long video sector from the beginning of this year. The company's another short video platform Xigua Video has started to produce entertainment program and web series, as part of its strategy carried out to compete with leading streaming websites such as iQiyi and Tencent Video.

By offering longer videos, TikTok expects to diversify its contents, to improve user viscosity.

An MCN firm founder said as the increase of short videos begins to slow down in late 2018, making vlogs, a form of video blog continuously recording a person's daily life, could become a new direction for the industry.  

Introducing longer video function will definitely give rise to more vloggers on TikTok, and those vlogs could make up for the deficiencies of short videos.

Currently TikTok is designed to help users to obtain much more information in a short time, but this will lead to a situation that users are only impressed by content itself but not care about the creators.

Thus extending the length of videos may bring new traffic and loyal users to the platform.

Besides, streaming websites that witness a sheer surge of short video MAUs are making a foray into the vertical short video field.

TikTok's new move indicates that the app also jumps on the trend.

In late November, iQiyi released its first vertical video series with each episode in 3-5 minutes, and soon grew into a hit.

The vertical videos will be the mainstream and more than 70 percent of Chinese users are watching contents on vertical screen, Gong Yu, founder and CEO of iQiyi mentioned in a conference this year.

iQiyi is not the only player in the market. Tencent Video launched a vertical talk show Talk to Her in June last year, which won 9.2 out of 10 rating and 160 million views.

Zhang Yi, founder of iiMedia Research, told NBD long and short video providers are seeking to grab users from each other, because they both find their bottleneck in growth.

Vertical video series create opportunities to bridge the gap between long and short video users, added Zhang.

He further noted those contents that mostly enjoyed during users' spare minutes will help cut the cost of streaming-video platforms to gain users and make them to stay longer on the platforms.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn