The 450-minute long video has become a phenomenal hit, and Tik Tok is "getting longer and longer"

A new phenomenon has emerged on the TikTok platform: long-form video content has become a hit, attracting a large number of viewers’ attention and interaction. These videos are often several hours long and cover a variety of topics, from academic lectures to literary commentaries. This article explores the reasons behind this phenomenon and its possible impact on content creators and the TikTok platform itself.

A 900-minute math explanation video has become popular on TikTok.

900 minutes, a full 15 hours. The author of the video, "Senior Jiajing - Only Talking about Essentials," said at the beginning of the video, "This video took 15 and a half years to make, a total of 900 minutes, and will take you through high school mathematics in one go."

This video has gone viral since it was released on Douyin on August 10. So far, it has received 3.28 million likes, and has been collected and forwarded more than 2.9 million times. Netizens in the comment section have called their friends to watch the video in groups.

Although the authenticity of the 15 and a half years cannot be verified, and the 900-minute video was divided into 6 parts due to its length, it did not prevent many netizens from being "controlled" by the 900 minutes of leaked information.

Extra-long videos seem to be becoming the new “traffic code” on TikTok.

The editorial department of Xinbang observed that there was a case of a long video that became popular on Douyin two months ago. On June 7, the knowledge blogger "Mi Sanhan" released a 450-minute video on Douyin, which was intended to take netizens through the entire "Dream of Red Mansions" in one go. The video was played more than 130 million times in 5 days and has received 12.45 million likes so far.

Last month, on July 13, a video titled "A 333-minute video of modern physics theory" by the science blogger "Scientific Epistemology" also became a hit. As of now, it has received more than 5.4 million likes and brought in nearly one million new fans.

There is also a 343-minute commentary on "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", a 240-minute commentary on "White Deer Plain", and even a 26-hour commentary video on the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Most of these super-long videos have received hundreds of thousands to millions of likes, which has also brought a lot of attention and discussion to the long video commentary content, which is not popular.

Douyin, which used to be characterized by short, flat and fast content, has undergone a subversive change? Will ultra-long videos have a chance to become mainstream on Douyin?

With these questions, the editorial department of Xinbang interviewed creators of Douyin's super-long video hits, such as "Mi Sanhan", "Scientific Epistemology", and "A Xiao Baozi", trying to explore how a video lasting several hours is created, and whether the popularity of super-long videos can bring new content opportunities.

1. A super long video that lasts hundreds of minutes is not created in one breath?

There is no official definition for the so-called super long video. It is a name given to videos based on their length. Compared with short videos of a few minutes or long videos of dozens of minutes, videos of hundreds of minutes can indeed be called "super long".

This is not a new form. On platforms that are known for medium and long videos, such as Bilibili, videos lasting several hours are not uncommon. What is worth noting is that previously this type of video was generally believed to have no market on short video platforms such as Douyin, but now it has ushered in an explosion in traffic.

The video "450 minutes to watch "Dream of Red Mansions" in one breath" released by "Mi Sanhan" on Douyin on June 7 was released on Bilibili as early as 2022. It has been played more than 5.35 million times and was once popular on Bilibili.

As the saying goes, good content has a chance to go viral again on different platforms. Two years later, "Mi Sanhan" posted the same content on Douyin, and it has been played more than 200 million times on Douyin so far.

Bilibili on the left, Tik Tok on the right

Unlike the video posted on Bilibili two years ago, the video posted on Douyin this time has a black background and white text introductory video, telling readers that the video took 5 months to produce and is a total of 450 minutes.

"Mi Sanhan" revealed to the editorial department of Xinbang that these 450 minutes are compiled from a series of short videos, and each video is about 20 to 30 minutes long.

"When I make videos, I tell stories to a friend. I read a whole book in one go, and then start making videos one by one. For classic plots, I can't help but write more text, and for less exciting ones, I'll write less. Naturally, the most important thing is to have your own view of classics and be able to dig out something," "Mi Sanhan" talked about.

Similar to "Mi Sanhan", the popular long videos of "Scientific Epistemology" are also accumulated by one video after another.

The account owner, Yang Shaodi, has an undergraduate degree in physics and worked as a physics teacher for two years after graduation. In 2017, he started to do text and picture self-media. After switching to short videos in 2018, he found that there were basically no in-depth explanations of physics knowledge on Douyin at that time. He tried to make a few episodes, such as content about quantum mechanics and Einstein's gravitational waves. The response was good, so he delved into the content track of physics explanation.

In most cases, the length of Douyin videos on "Scientific Epistemology" is about 5 minutes. In Yang Shaodi's opinion, "Douyin is a fast-consumption platform. If it is too long but the number of views is not good, the time and energy invested will be not worth it."

After New Year's Day 2022, Yang Shaodi began to accumulate the physics explanation videos he made daily. In more than two years, he accumulated a 330-minute content, which has been kept in his computer.

Some time ago, he played this video on loop every night in his Douyin live broadcast room of "Scientific Epistemology", and gained 100,000 followers in three months until he stopped because the platform did not allow recorded broadcasts.

In July this year, he saw that many knowledge and science creators were posting extremely long videos on Douyin one after another. Many of these single pieces of content received 200,000 or 300,000 likes, bringing tens of thousands of new followers to their accounts.

"If you can do it, I can do it too", Yang Shaodi thought, and uploaded the 330-minute video. At that time, he did not have high expectations, "It would be good if it could get over 100,000 likes and gain 20,000 to 30,000 fans".

Unexpectedly, starting from the second day after the video was released, the traffic increased rapidly, with 200,000 followers added in one day, and the number of likes on Douyin reached nearly 5.4 million. Within a week of its release, the number of followers of "Scientific Epistemology" on Douyin reached nearly one million.

Looking back on the creation process of this hit video, Yang Shaodi believes that the "warning" text at the beginning of the video may have provided a significant assist.

At the beginning of the video, he wrote a prompt in white text on a black background, emphasizing that "this video took two years to make, a total of 333 minutes", and explained that this video will deeply interpret the modern physics knowledge system of the past 100 years. "The prefix is ​​30 seconds long, which sounds very 'bluffing'. The entire physics knowledge is quite grand. If it is shortened, it will not seem so grand."

The editorial department of Xinbang found that the super long videos that have become popular recently all have an opening without exception, all of which are white text on a black background, and the key parts are highlighted in yellow. The content is mostly about how many years it took to complete the video, how many minutes it is in total, and what story is told in one breath.

In this wave of ultra-long video traffic craze, the first person to use similar opening titles was probably the knowledge creator "Yizhi Xiao Baozi".

On May 29, "Yizhi Xiao Baozi" posted a 55-minute video on Douyin that gave an in-depth interpretation of "One Hundred Years of Solitude". For the first time, at the beginning of the video, he wrote in white letters on a black background: "This video took two months to make. It will take 55 minutes to give you an in-depth interpretation of the world-famous novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

So far, this video has received more than 450,000 likes on Douyin, becoming the first hit of the Douyin account of "Yizhi Xiao Baozi". Previously, although he had 1.25 million followers on Bilibili, his Douyin account had always received mediocre responses, and he even gave up updating it for a while until the super-long video theme became popular.

Starting from June, he struck while the iron was hot and released dozens of long video commentaries in succession, covering famous novels from ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, such as "The Red and the Black", "The Three-Body Problem", "White Deer Plain", and "Lychees in Chang'an". Among them, the video "240 Minutes of In-depth Interpretation of "White Deer Plain"" received over 1.1 million likes on Douyin, and the video "226 Minutes of In-depth Interpretation of "The Three-Body Problem"" received over 1.57 million likes on Douyin, with a playback volume of 60 million.

2. Are Tik Tok’s ultra-long videos a flash in the pan or a new trend?

Whether it is a 450-minute commentary on "Dream of Red Mansions" or a 333-minute popular science lecture on modern physics, all the long videos that can become hits are based on high-quality content.

The editorial department of Xinbang found that most creators who can create popular super-long videos have their content capabilities verified on platforms such as Douyin and Bilibili, and have produced explosive content. Some of them have already become leaders with millions of fans on other platforms.

The B station homepage of Yizhi Xiao Baozi and Mi Sanhan

After ensuring that the content is of sufficient quality, operations and timing are also important.

"If it wasn't released at this time, there would definitely not be so many likes relying solely on natural traffic," Yang Shaodi believes.

Douyin has long been eyeing the market for medium and long videos. As early as June 2021, Douyin officially launched the "Mid-length Video Partner Program", using 2 billion yuan to encourage the development of medium and long-length videos.

In the past few years, Douyin has also continued to support medium and long videos, such as focusing on knowledge verticals, renaming the "Qingtao" App to "Douyin Selections", etc. This is not only an important supplement to the platform's content ecology, but also conducive to grabbing user time in the era of Internet traffic inventory.

In the first half of this year, Douyin began to test the waters for "super long videos" and launched related activities related to long video content for knowledge creators. Accounts that publish in-depth, high-quality long video content have the opportunity to obtain platform promotion and support.

Yang Shaodi said: "There is an official event called #Science Highlight Story Collection#, and many videos longer than five hours have received more than 100,000 likes." Therefore, he suggested that creators who want to test the waters seize the platform dividends.

However, not all super-long videos can be supported. According to the observation of the editorial department of Xinbang, continuously releasing super-long videos may not necessarily maintain the peak traffic state. It is not uncommon for the first video to get a million likes and the next one to get tens of thousands likes. As more and more accounts enter the market to test the waters, the platform's traffic recommendations are also diluted.

Completion rate is also a problem. For example, the long video "333 minutes of modern physics knowledge" in the "Scientific Epistemology" section only has an average playback progress of about 20 seconds.

For the same video explaining "Dream of Red Mansions", many people in the comment section of Bilibili are discussing the plot of "Dream of Red Mansions", while in the comment section of Douyin, most of the comments are joking, "Do you know that this is a short video platform?" and "When will these 6 million people who forwarded it watch it?" It seems that it is difficult to truly accumulate a large number of long video audiences.

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Bilibili on the left and Tik Tok on the right also raises another question about the popularity of super long videos: Will super long videos be a "flash in the pan" that the platforms support?

Creators such as "Mi Sanhan" and "Yizhi Xiao Baozi" expressed different opinions. They believed that "the popularity of data is the result of the right time, right place and right people, but apart from these, I am doing this and continue to publish this kind of content. I am just waiting for this opportunity."

"Yizhi Xiao Baozi" revealed that after the release of the super long video content, he received a lot of positive feedback from fans, "Quite a lot of people like this form. Although Douyin is a short, flat and fast platform in the public's stereotype, fortunately, its base is large enough, so we also have our own wave of loyal audiences."

Although the completion rate issue may cast a question mark on the commercialization of super-long videos, and there are no cases of advertisers placing ads on them so far, the popularity of super-long videos does give these long-content accounts the opportunity to be seen by more advertisers.

Some advertisers have seen the content production capabilities of the "Yizhi Xiao Baozi" team through the recent hit long videos and have taken the initiative to commission customized videos. Now the number of inquiries for "Scientific Epistemology" business orders is two or three times as much as before. After the 333-minute hit video alone, there were more than 10 advertisers inquiring about orders.

Another example is "Mi Sanhan", who had only 10,000 followers on Douyin before publishing the video "450 minutes of in-depth interpretation of "Dream of Red Mansions". After publishing several super-long videos with millions of likes, his Douyin followers soared to 4.5 million, and he also received many olive branches from advertisers. Although he did not respond to most of them because he was "not in a hurry to monetize."

In his opinion, he has been working on content creation for three years, and he is not afraid to work for a few more years now that he is successful. "I still hope to create content in a way that makes both users and myself feel comfortable."

On July 11, he released a video titled "Watching The Legend of White Snake in One Breath", which was a collaboration with the movie "White Snake: Floating Life". The other party gave him a lot of creative freedom and only required "Mi Sanhan" to explain the ancient version of "The Legend of White Snake" in his own style.

Of course, considering the threshold for creation, super-long videos may not become mainstream in the future. Even those creators who have already created popular works will need time to accumulate new materials.

However, "A Xiao Baozi" believes that long videos are just a form of content carrier. If you are too obsessed with the length of the video, your focus may be misplaced.

In his opinion, "Whether it is a super long video or a short video, the length can only serve as a temporary gimmick. It does not mean that the content will become popular if it is long and boring. In the end, we still have to return to the content itself and not be kidnapped by the market. The length is just a form of presentation and has little to do with the quality of the content itself."

The temporary traffic of the super-long video did not affect the goal of "Mi Sanhan". He was determined to do a good job in explaining the traditional culture. "Just do good things and don't ask about the future. Since a target has been set far away, I will not only look at the present, but see if there is anything worth settling down in the later stage."

Author | Truffle Editor | Zhang Jie This article is written by the operator author [Xinbang], WeChat public account: [Xinbang], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.