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| ▲ This photo, provided by TikTok, shows creators taking photos at TikTok live booth. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ This graph, provided by data.ai, shows cumulative downloads of global entertainment apps over 10 years as of the fourth quarter of last year. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ These images, provided by each company, show the logo of Naver and Kakao. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲ This photo, provided by Houseapp, shows the development of Houseapp. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) – As “short-form," which means short videos within up to 10 minutes, has emerged as a global trend, IT platforms are applying short-form to services and marketing one after another.
According to the IT industry on Friday, marketing platform companies Nasmedia and ironSource jointly selected short-form as the recently announced “Marketing Trend of the Year”.
Since TikTok, the beginning of the global short-form platform, introduced the service in 2016, the way people consume contents has changed since short-form became a trend on various platforms such as YouTube Shorts, Facebook, and Instagram “Reels”.
It is analyzed that the reason short-forms are so popular is because it is usually made in tens of seconds, so users can enjoy various contents without the burden of investing a long time or maintaining concentration. From the platform's point of view, it is highly utilized as it can attract users to videos, articles, and webtoons that summarize the contents.
Short-form has grown rapidly, gaining popularity around Generation Z (the generation born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s), but as there are more platforms to enjoy short-form, consumers are spreading to all ages.
According to the Nielsen Korean Click survey, the number of users in their 40s more than doubled from 380,000 to 840,000 while the number of teenage TikTok users rose 28% from 1.36 million as of June 2021 to 1.74 million in June last year. During the same period, the number of users in their 50s also increased 71% from 350,000 to 600,000.
An industry official said, "TikTok's rapid growth has led to YouTube and Instagram's introduction of short-form services in the 2020s. As accessibility has improved, short-form consumers have expanded," adding, "The industry sector that applies short-form to services is diversifying."
Naver, the representative of domestic IT platforms, has decided to strengthen short-form contents last year and applied short-form to various services such as shopping and news.
In January last year, Naver has introduced a 10-minute video "Taste Shopping" service ahead of the broadcast on the live commerce service "Shopping Live." TikTokers appear and quickly explain the product in the form of real-time questions and answers.
Naver also provided short-form news in October last year when it launched a news service called "My News 20s Edition" aimed at young users in their 20s and younger. Short-form content posted on Naver Open Talk during the 2022 Qatar World Cup was so popular that the average number of views per episode was 2.6 times higher than that of ordinary World Cup videos.
Kakao is also looking into ways to introduce a short-form within the first half of this year to make it a space for users to communicate. KakaoTalk's content placement service "View" already provides short-forms on various topics such as entertainment, webtoons, and cooking as well as news.
There is also a case of success by converting the nature of the platform itself by incorporating short platforms.
“Houseapp”, which was launched as an interior commerce platform in 2015, switched to a short-form review commerce platform in June 2021. Since then, annual transactions have surpassed 100 billion won last year, about a 14-fold increase compared to 2020 transactions.
HouseApp has explained that it was effective in collecting and providing short-form reviews from the app's main screen, allowing users to receive content that matches their interests and tastes, and inducing communication.
Kim Sung-min, CEO of House Media, a Houseapp operator, said, "The entry barrier has been lowered so that even housewives in their 30s and 40s have become a means of communication without burden," adding, "We are supporting anyone who want to create high quality short-form content by providing their own short-form production guides and paying product sales fees."
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Yunhee Cho.)
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