TikTok has been an extremely popular app among youngsters. So much so that several social media giants tried to copy it and launched their own version of short-form videos. Despite several big names joining the club, TikTok remains the undisputed leader of the market. This has been proved once again as social media users are spending more time on TikTok than YouTube. The ByteDance-owned short video platform has outpaced the streaming giant in terms of average viewing time for the first time. As per the report prepared by the app analytics firm App Annie, the average time users spend on TikTok every month is more than 24 hours. This is considerably more when compared with 22 hours and 40 minutes watched on Google-owned YouTube. This solidifies a trend that was visible in August last year. During that time, TikTok overtook YouTube in the United States for the first time. This is now expanding to other countries and the gap between TikTok and YouTube is growing wider. According to the report, TikTok surpassed YouTube in the United Kingdom in May of last year. Social media users are spending almost 26 hours in a month on TikTok in comparison to less than 16 hours on YouTube during the same time frame.
But the figures are based on viewership on Android phones only. This means the scenario could be slightly different if data of iOS users are also included. However, the report does highlight the fact that social media users are more interested in flipping through bite-sized videos than killing time by watching longer-format of videos on YouTube. It must be noted that TikTok has limited the length of the video to three minutes. Though, this is likely to be changed in the near future. The one thing this report clearly shows is exactly why all social media platforms are busy launching short-form video platforms. Among the first ones to do is Instagram, which announced Reels. The feature is more or less the same as TikTok. The next one on the list was Twitter which announced a short-lived story feature called Fleets. Reddit too has announced that it is working on a new short-video format feed. The feature will be almost similar to TikTok and will have similar functionality as well. Users would be able to swipe, share and comment on videos along with the option of upvote and downvote.
YouTube is also trying to take on TikTok with the launch of its own YouTube Shorts. YouTube recently made the service available in new countries. Shorts allows users to enjoy 60-second videos which are integrated with the main interface of YouTube. The feature is available for both iOS and Android users. Short has options that let users record short videos and then publish them using their smartphones. No doubt YouTube is trying to ape the short-form video format, but it still remains the leader in time spent overall. This is undoubted because of its two billion users worldwide. On the other hand, TikTok has roughly 700 million users. Meanwhile, there are reports that the ByteDance-owned company is looking to raise USD 5 billion for business development. The capitalization of ByteDance was estimated at USD 425 billion in mid-summer. But it needs cash for further development. It is negotiating with banks to provide a loan. Most of the money would be used to refinance old debts. Meanwhile, TikTok continues to give tough competition to other Silicon Valley incumbents like Facebook. Last year, it surpassed Facebook Messenger to become the most downloaded app in the United States. The video-sharing platform also overtook Mark Zuckerberg’s company to overtake Facebook as the most downloaded social app worldwide.
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