When we think of TikTok , the first rival that comes to mind is Instagram. The Chinese network of short videos has put Mark Zuckerberg’s empire on the ropes in record time. However, fear is not only breathed in the offices of Meta. According to a study, TikTok has a clear path to overtake YouTube , since the audience that is hooked on one-minute clips is not the one we had in mind.
YouTube, warm up, what are you doing?
Can TikTok end the reign of YouTube? For eMarketer , this is not a question, but rather a statement, and the sorpasso is going to happen sooner rather than later. TikTok already outperforms Google’s video network in one of the parameters that hurts the most: the average time users spend on its app . And it is that, many thought that TikTok was a network aimed at a younger audience, but the data says practically the opposite.
According to a study carried out this past April 2022, adults already spend an average of 45.8 minutes a day on TikTok , which means that the Chinese network is already above YouTube, even if it is for just a few seconds. This is very bad news for Google and Meta. These two American companies already gave up on the young public – who were born on TikTok and do not plan to leave that network for anything in the world – but they did not expect adults to change sides so quickly.
The fact that TikTok has overtaken YouTube indicates that this platform from the Chinese company ByteDance could soon exercise absolute dominance in the international social media landscape, as Facebook already did at the time. And, on a global level, we already know what happens when China positions itself above the United States – and if not, ask Huawei.
10 minute videos: a turning point for TikTok
TikTok recently announced that they are preparing their platform so that their users can upload videos of up to 10 minutes. Therefore, this long-form content could do even more damage to Google , since a whole generation of kids is at stake who could completely ignore a network as immense as YouTube.
Imitation is the sincerest form of admiration
That’s what Oscar Wilde said and that’s what Instagram and Google have said to TikTok almost without realizing it. Instagram was able to resist Snapchat’s challenge by copying its news with the launch of Stories, but they have not had the same luck with Reels, which are successful, but are seen as a cheap substitute for TikTok. We knew that young people had not been fooled by the white label, and now, with these studies, what can be clearly read is that adults also prefer to consume TikTok content on TikTok, instead of a rehash on other social networks. —although it is uploaded by the same user, which is not always the case—.
In the worst case we have YouTube -here we will not go into evaluating YouTube Shorts-. If Google is going to lose this battle, it will be due in part to the way it has treated its community all these years. For quite some time now, users have seen YouTube as a network that goes like a headless chicken, experimenting almost without measure and completely neglecting its most precious asset: its network of creators . It is not surprising that many have decided to abandon this platform, even if it is in order to migrate to an alternative in which the air is much less heated.
And the European?
Meanwhile, those of us who are watching the bulls from the sidelines are the Europeans. In almost two decades, Europe has not been able to bet on an innovation interesting enough to face the United States in terms of new forms of communication and social networks. That TikTok, a network that was born in a country as opaque as China, has managed to face Google or Facebook face to face should serve as a kind of self -criticism about the weight our continent has in globalization .