Longer videos are coming to some users on TikTok.
The company is reportedly letting some users create videos up to three minutes long. The previous limit was 60 seconds.
On Wednesday, social media consultant Matt Navarra shared a screenshot of an update he received in the TikTok app. The notification informed Navarra that his account was granted “early access” to the new, longer video feature.
Mashable reached out to TikTok for comment and will update this story if the company responds.
As The Verge points out, TikTok’s videos are longer than Vine’s six seconds and much shorter than videos on YouTube. This has worked out well for the platform so far. Short, bite-sized videos make the app particularly viral and addictive. It’s easy to consume video after video when they are so short.
Huge changes to the foundation of a platform are always risky. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.
For example, a few years ago Twitter began testing a 280-character limit, double what it previously allowed. It worked.
On the flip side, at the beginning of the decade, Digg was the king of the social news aggregator platforms. Then it redesigned its website, in the process fundamentally changing the way Digg worked. Users jumped ship.
That’s why it appears TikTok is being careful, only testing longer videos with a limited number of creators.