Ángel Jiménez from Luis USA

USA

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-21:14

The latest

twist in TikTok's strategy

can be interpreted literally. The company, famous for its short vertical videos, now wants creators to pay more attention to YouTube and other platforms and create longer, landscape videos.

Several creators with millions of followers have received messages in the app this week urging them to create horizontal videos longer than one minute with the promise that

TikTok will promote them more aggressively in its algorithm.

The recommendation is reaching accounts that have been on the platform for more than three months and with two exceptions:

the videos cannot be advertisements or political propaganda.

In exchange, the social network commits to showing them to many more users in a period of 72 hours,

a boost that is key to continuing to grow in audience

within the platform. The for you tab, which mixes videos posted by accounts you follow but also recommendations from new users, is the best way for creators to reach a new audience and negotiate better advertising deals or receive more money from TikTok if they are part of the creator scholarship program.

The measure is not the first step that TikTok, which was born as an application focused on short videos focused on music and dance but has become one of the most influential social networks, takes in this direction. In recent years, those responsible for it have tried to convince creators to upload longer videos and

now allow content of up to 30 minutes,

in some cases.

The objective is to fight face to face with the online video giant,

YouTube, which at the moment is the platform of choice for the vast majority of creators.

It is also the one that has the most advertisers and therefore the one that usually pays the most for views, one of the sources of income for influencers and YouTubers, especially when they are starting their career and cannot negotiate agreements with brands on their own.

It should be noted, in any case, that YouTube is also taking the same path,

although in the opposite direction.

For a year now, it has been trying to promote short videos in vertical format, which it calls

YouTube Shorts,

as an alternative to TikTok videos, which often go viral and have a greater capacity to engage the audience within the app.