PALO ALTO, U.S. -- TikTok, the online platform known for hosting super-short videos, is edging into longer-format territory as competition in user-generated videos heats up.
The company, owned by China's ByteDance, announced on Thursday that users will be able to upload 3-minute clips, triple the platform's original limit. Last week ByteDance launched a web version of Douyin -- the Chinese version of TikTok -- as part of its broader push into the longer-form video market.
The move comes as the line between short- and long-format video platforms continues to blur, with rivals such as YouTube and Instagram launching their own TikTok-like features.
TikTok itself has been testing the 3-minute video feature with a limited number of creators on the platform since last year. The company said Thursday that it will be rolling out the option to create longer videos to everyone on TikTok over the coming weeks.
"With all the ways our community has redefined expression in under 60 seconds, we're excited to see how people continue to entertain and inspire with a few more seconds -- and a world of creative possibilities," Drew Kirchhoff, a product manager at TikTok, said in a company release.
ByteDance has been testing the longer-form video feature on its other apps. The company expanded length limits on Douyin from 15 seconds to 1 minute in 2019. The company then allowed certain creators to upload videos of up to 5 minutes in 2020.
The web version launched last week features more longer-form videos than its mobile app.
"Douyin has accumulated a lot of different contents. ... Many education-related videos are shot horizontally and are longer than five minutes. The web version is better for watching those videos," the company told Chinese media last week.
While TikTok is synonymous with short, viral clips for many people, the popularity of short videos among millennials and Generation Z around the world has spurred other companies to enter the fray.
Facebook-owned Instagram rolled out a feature called Reels last year that allows users to create short videos, while YouTube launched YouTube Shorts in a direct challenge to TikTok in 2020.
TikTok and Douyin's move in the other direction -- away from their original super-short format to longer videos -- promises to intensify competition in the creator-generated video market even more.