China’s short video apps are expanding into longer formats, betting that people want their 15 minutes of social media fame
- ByteDance disclosed earlier this month that its Douyin platform had more than 320 million daily users
“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” These words, associated with the late artist Andy Warhol, will be put to the test by popular Chinese short video apps Kuaishou and Douyin, which are testing longer-form videos of up to – yes, 15 minutes – after starting a worldwide craze for short-form videos.
On Douyin, known outside China as TikTok and operated by Beijing-based ByteDance, some users with large fan bases have been able to upload 15-minute long videos since June. Starting this month, some Kuaishou users have been able to upload videos that run as long as 10 minutes.
With fierce competition in the Chinese short video market, platforms like Kuaishou and Douyin are betting that expanding to longer form videos will enable them to hold on to more eyeballs in the attention economy, and ignite the next social media craze among the country’s 829 million internet users and beyond.
ByteDance disclosed on July 9 that its Douyin platform had more than 320 million daily active users (DAUs), while Kuaishou’s vice-president Wang Qiang said in May its DAUs had surpassed 200 million.
“They are trying to attract more fans and explore new business models,” said Zhao Haibo, a short-film director with over 410,000 followers on Kuaishou who is also president of the Yulin Micro Film Association in northwestern China’s Shaanxi province. “The biggest change is that you can find more professional teams that produce short stories on Kuaishou now.”
Before Kuaishou enabled the new function for his account on July 8, he had to split a 15 minute-long microfilm into several episodes because of the previous time limit.