Just when you’d accepted the verticle video format, TikTok goes and pulls a surprise on all of us and starts testing out a new horizontal full-screen video format.
The trial has rolled out globally but only to selected accounts, so if you don’t see it yet, don’t be surprised. It’s allegedly still in beta testing. This nod towards YouTube follows on from earlier in the year when TikTok began allowing longer form videos of up to 10 minutes.
The button to switch to horizontal full-screen mode is very similar to YouTube’s own square seen in the bottom right-hand corner. By clicking on it during a video, users can change the format to a full-screen horizontal version. TikTok apparently confirmed the testing to TechCrunch after several users noticed the new option.
It’s an interesting development and does seem to be that TikTok is positioning itself to rival giant YouTube more and more. Up until now, the biggest difference was the verticle versus horizontal format. Although YouTube itself introduced verticle short-form videos in 2020, further narrowing the gap between the two leading video-sharing platforms.
It’s good news for creators, however. Before, we had to film things in two separate formats if we wanted to post across different platforms. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief and comfortably go back to shooting everything horizontally. Unless you’re posting to Instagram Reels, that is.
I’m really not certain what all of this jostling for top dog position is all about with the big social media apps becoming more and more like generic copies of themselves. Will we see one of them falling completely out of favor in the coming year?
[Via The Verge]
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