2018 marked the birth of the most used social media of the world – Tik Tok. The realm of short form videos, lip syncing and 30-second dances. An app that was once seen as a poor excuse of YouTube turned the heads of all video streaming companies with its success. During lockdown, Tik Tok became the most used social media platform just below the king – YouTube. And thus was born a lore for short form content.
HOW DID SHORT FORM CONTENT RISE TO POPULARITY
The formula of Tik Tok seemed perfect, these 30 second videos are cool because now people can get more information in a small amount of time, our brain loves short form content because of its information density. Covering more topics in a small time became a really powerful way to get us hooked to the platform and scroll endlessly for hours.
More we are hooked into the platform more the company should earn and thus can cater their creators, encouraging them to create more videos. Seeing the success of many influencers from Tik Tok a whole crowd entered Tik Tok in hopes of being successful.
This created an exponential growth for Tik Tok, turning it from a poor recreation of YouTube to something that proved successful. The number of users that YouTube gained in 15 years, Tik Tok gained in a mere 3 years.
Seeing its massive success, all that companies wanted to become was Tik Tok. YouTube named it YouTube shorts; Instagram named it reels. Now the entire social media became Tik Tok dubbed in many names. Even apps like Reddit, Pinterest and even Amazon have short form video features.
The TikTokification of social media actually proved itself, the number of YouTube creators grew tenfold since 2020, the total watch time of YouTube grew even more. But all these companies didn’t look through the long-term impact of their platform. And this is where the problem starts
THE PROBLEM
If you didn’t know by now, the way social media platforms make money is majorly by ads, the type of ads that YouTube ranges from ads that are skippable after 5 seconds all the way up to 8 Un skippable ads, this might seem annoying to its users yet this is how both creators and YouTube make money.
But in the new wave of short form content, it is impossible to do it, there is no way to put ads in between your short form videos, even if platforms show ads like YouTube shorts, you can just ignore it and scroll away without waiting for 5 seconds like normal videos.
So social media platforms lose money the more they emphasize on short form videos. Mark Zuckerberg addressed just this in an interview.
He told that “the monetization efficiency of reels is much less than the feed, so the more the reels grow even though it adds engagement to the system overall it takes some time away from feed and we actually lose money”
So, it is now evident that even the companies who make this aren’t profited by their own creation, so the obvious thing to do is to discourage reels and emphasize on long form videos.
Instagram already have stopped paying creators for reels, only posts in Instagram feeds can get monetized, Tik Tok, who cannot move away from short form content, increased to maximum video length from 30 seconds to 10 whole minutes, and Tik Tokers are only eligible for monetization if they post video longer than a minute.
Yes, creators can earn from sponsorships and other forms of plugins but for creators who left their jobs and devoted their life to social media, this is bad. Already the number of people who create Instagram reels are fading, seeing that they have no future in it, they are moving to platforms that can pay them better.
YouTube is also suffering a similar fate. Unlike Long form videos, the funding for YouTube shorts is limited, so the total money that is kept for shorts is fixed. So, everyone is running to get a piece of a fixed pie. Thus, the more users use it, the smaller each piece actually becomes, so creators are becoming more and more discouraged at making short form videos, because YouTube cannot monetize efficiently in shorts, the fixed amount/ the fixed pie becomes smaller by the day and YouTube cannot even create more funds for shorts because they aren’t earning from it.
Resulting in lower encouragement to creators and thus less creators and less videos, thus it might create a downfall to youtube. If there are less videos it will impact the users too, so less watch time to YouTube.
It becomes evident that short form content is bad for the company, creators and the viewers, no one is benefitted by this in the long term. So, what now, what will happen to shorts, what is the future of social media?
IS THIS THE END OF SHORTS
There is always light at the end of a tunnel and for shorts there might be one, we just have to search for the light. Short form content as we know it today will not continue but it could get amended into something else that is better for the creators, the companies and the viewers.
This might be the end of the Tik Tok dances but this could be the dawn of a new type of content creation, that has the best of both worlds. Until then, let's wait.
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