Why Social Media Companies are Sick of Short Videos? Problems with Short Videos in 2023

Do you watch Instagram Reels or Youtube shorts or is there TikTok on your Phone?

Almost everyone with a smartphone and Internet access has one of these on their phones, especially the younger generation who are rigged in this mess.

Short video content has affected not only content creators but also the audience a lot,

How did it start?

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Everything started with Tik-Tok a Chinese app by Bytedance, it allows creators to make 15-30 seconds of short videos and post them on their profile it was just like a youtube app that allows only short videos and after its launch in India, it became very successful.

People were getting viral by doing stupid things overnight. Soon this app was on everyone’s smartphone and TikTok get more than a 100 Million user base in India.

Soon after that Indian government banned this Chinese app for privacy concerns and everything was over for TikTok in a blink of an eye. But the concern was that till this app was banned everyone was addicted to short-form content. They soon started searching for an alternative in the Indian market, there were many apps resed soon after TikTok was banned.

Free social media tools for content creators here.

But none of these really worked well, big social media companies saw it as a significant opportunity to capture this big audience. Soon after that Instagram release their short video feature in their app, Instagram Reels.

Instagram Reels has the same feature as TikTok you can directly record a video do basic editing and post it directly on the app or just upload it as a short video.

After a few months, Youtube releases the same feature Youtube shorts for short video content. With youtube shore creators can now create short forms of their content.

How it’s going?

When these platforms launched their new feature they got new creators and consumers very soon because people were already searching for alternative platforms for shore video after Tik-Toc was removed.

Creators started getting millions of views on every video and engagement in Billions even some famous creators are getting Billions of views combined on their short videos on different platforms.

Everything is all well and good until we start talking about the money that they are generating from short-form content, after all this is something that social media companies care most about, if the content is not monetized and not generating revenue then that is useless for the company.

But in this situation both parties are facing the same problem, social media companies and being unable to monetize this short-form content.

Problem with Short-form Content

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The main problem with short-form content is that it’s very difficult to monetize, and even when companies try to monetize them, engagement on those ads is very low, Instagram tries to run short ads in reels and it failed miserably.

In the case of Instagram users could easily scroll ads like reels and were not engaging with the ads and if they are not engaging with the ads, the person running the ad is not going to run their ads on that platform again.

Social media companies spend millions and billions for these features and if they are not paying back then those are just liabilities for the company.

Youtube shorts launched $100 million in funds for its short creators and keep them engaged. But the problem is this money is nothing in front of Millions of creators and youtube can’t afford to pay every creator from their own pocket.

So, most of the time creators don’t get paid and they just have to satisfy themself with the engagement.

Since creators are not paid for these short videos, they are moving from short videos to long video formats, in reality, short video platforms were never the future for the creators, they used them as a tool to get their audience and then shifted to the long video format.

Companies are struggling to get ad revenue from their short form of content because consumers are not engaging with the ads.

In the long video format, you can’t skip ads directly, you have to watch at least 5 sec of ad. every long video has 2-3 ads, and depending upon the length of the video it can have multiple ads.

Since more and more people are getting into long-form content from short-form content, this transition creating more and more competition in long-form content.

Other problems with short videos

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Short videos are addictive and people once start watching them keep scrolling for hours and they don’t even know when time has passed.

Short videos give you short time pleasure that’s why when people stop watching these videos they start getting bored.

It affects our mental health and decreases focus time since every short video is about 15-10 seconds and after that topic changes and your focus shifts in a very short period of time, so if you are a student short videos are dangerous for you.

kids below the age of 12 should watch these short videos and parents should be aware of these things since social media has come and the Internet is accessible for everyone, outdoor activities have dropped drastically and their physical health has been affected the most.

Creators do crazy things in short videos in order to get viral in a short period of time and be famous and sometimes this can go horribly wrong, sometimes platforms have to sensor these videos themselves.

Conclusion

Short videos are a disaster not just for companies but also for the audience, You should use these tools very carefully otherwise you would waste your precious time on these useless things.

Short videos are a liability for their platforms, companies have spent millions to add this feature and now they can’t get money back.

In short words, these are the short-term tools that creators use to get an audience for their long-form content.