1 Billion Videos Per Day on TikTok

Posted December 11, 2023

Share To

 

  TweetEmail

I was sitting on the subway the other day. Looking around the car, I noticed that most everyone had their heads buried in their phones. This is nothing new. We are a society obsessed with the little devices in our pockets. Staring at the screens of the people sitting next to me, I noticed the person on my left was watching videos on TikTok and the person on my right was watching videos on Instagram. These short-form video platforms have become the new obsession of people worldwide on their devices. 

Recent statistics point to this obsession more clearly. Globally TikTok reports to have 1.1 billion monthly active users with 150 million of them in The United States. These figures easily make it the most popular app in the world. Those users watch over a billion videos every single day. That is an astonishing figure. One billion videos are consumed every day on the platform. The average length of a video on the platform is just over 30 seconds. With bite-sized videos like that users can churn through a huge amount of videos while they scroll. On the other end, each day over 34 million videos are uploaded to the platform. A constant stream of new videos is put onto the platform for users to watch and engage with.  

We are a video society. It is what most people spend most of their time doing — consuming video content on their phones. Just 10 years ago when streaming was still in its infancy with Netflix as the primary player, many turned their noses up at the idea that people would replace the traditional broadcast television experience for watching shows on their laptops or their phones. Now, the practice is quite commonplace. The big bad wolf for broadcast wasn’t only direct-to-stream content (a business that broadcasters themselves now participate in), but rather this user-generated content. 

Unlike broadcast and traditional streaming the barrier to entry for making videos for TikTok is zero. If you have a smartphone and an internet connection, you can make a TikTok. The question is: will anyone watch it? Furthermore, will anyone want to keep watching it and watch more of your videos? If you want the answer to these questions to be yes then you have to figure out how to make something people want to watch. Luckily for you, the answers are right in front of you.  

Just open up TikTok and see what works. TikTok is a two-way street, people are constantly consuming and producing. On the producing side you have, in basic real-time, the ability to see if your videos are gaining any traction or not. If something isn’t working, try something else. When something works, then expand on that. On the consuming side, you can see what videos are trending and getting lots of views. The answer to what works is right in front of you. In most cases, what works on these platforms is the same thing that works elsewhere in film and video. The core tenets of great video storytelling do not change on the platform. Ultimately it comes down to great characters and a great arc of story. That should be the starting point for anyone who wants to make videos on the platform.  

With people spending so much time on TikTok on their phones, the need for compelling content on there has never been greater. Thus, the opportunity for success on the platform also has never been greater. This type of video is only going to secure a tighter grip on society, so if you want to get into video, gone are the days of sending your resume over to the local TV station. Now is the time to pick up your phone and start making something for the users of the world to watch.