TikTok rose to popularity with its endless stream of short videos. Now the company has increased the video limit by three times. In other words, TikTok will no longer limit videos to one minute and allow anyone to longer three minutes videos. The extension is expected to help creators express themselves in a better way and avoid multi-part posts.

TikTok had been testing three-minute videos since December last year. The longer videos were available only for select TikTok creators. TikTok is now rolling out the long-form videos to all users “over the coming weeks.” Time limit extension will help creators in categories like cooking. They no longer have to speed up the video and squeeze it in one minute.

We often hear from creators that they’d love just a little more time to bring their cooking demos, elaborate beauty tutorials, educational lesson plans, and comedic sketches to life with TikTok’s creative tools. With longer videos, creators will have the canvas to create new or expanded types of content on TikTok, with the flexibility of a bit more space.

In the next few weeks, TikTok users will be able to create longer videos. Furthermore, you will be able to film and edit videos up to three minutes directly on TikTok. You will get a notification once the feature is available on your account. On a related note, we wonder whether TikTok’s algorithm will give preference to longer videos.

Our Take

It is prevalent for platforms to change their character or video length limit to increase customer retention. In 2019 Twitter doubled its character limit from 140 to 280. Even YouTube’s algorithm is biased towards longer videos that translate to better user retention and increased ad revenue. Hopefully, TikTok videos retain the essence of being short and funky despite the increase in time limit.