When we think TikTok, the first rival that comes to mind is Instagram. The Chinese short video network has put Mark Zuckerberg's empire on the ropes in record time. However, fear is not only breathed in the Meta offices. According to a study, TikTok has a clear path to overtake YouTube, because the public that is hooked on the one-minute clips is not the one we had in mind.
YouTube, warm up, you're out
Can TikTok end YouTube's reign? For eMarketer, this is not a question, but rather a statement, and the overtaking It's going to happen sooner rather than later. TikTok already surpasses the Google video network in one of the parameters that hurt the most: the time users spend on average in your app. And it is that, many thought that TikTok was a network aimed at the younger audience, but the data says practically the opposite.
According to a study they conducted 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 located above YouTube, even for just a few seconds. This is very bad news for Google and Meta. These two American companies already gave up on the young audience – who were born on TikTok and don't plan to abandon said network for anything in the world – but they didn't expect adults to change sides so quickly.
The fact that TikTok has surpassed YouTube indicates that this platform of the Chinese company ByteDance could soon exert a stranglehold in the panorama of social networks at an international level, as Facebook did at the time. And, globally, we already know what happens when China overtakes 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 make even more damage to Google, because a whole generation of kids is at stake who could completely ignore a network as huge 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 attack 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. —even if 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 assessing YouTube Shorts. If Google is going to lose this battle, it will be due in part to the way it has treated its community over the years. For quite some time now, users have seen YouTube as a network that runs like a chicken without a head, experimenting almost without measure and completely neglecting its most precious asset: its creators network. It is not surprising that many have decided to abandon this platform, even if it is to migrate to an alternative in which 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 it 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 go head to head with Google or Facebook should serve as a kind of self-criticism about what weight our continent has in globalization.