[W Forum] Should It Be Short? The Growth of Short-Form Content

Short form content, which has recently gained attention as a trend, literally refers to videos of short length. Although there is some debate about how short a video must be to qualify as short form, the 15-second video craze brought by the Chinese company ByteDance's TikTok has instilled the belief that short and impactful content can succeed.

Why short form now? According to a survey this year, the average human attention span is 7 seconds. Living in the digital age, we are surrounded by many stimuli and seem accustomed to multitasking, handling several tasks at once, but the actual time we can focus has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to 7 seconds now. It is somewhat shocking that this is even shorter than the 9-second attention span of a goldfish. Paradoxically, however, haven’t we been forced to get used to longer videos despite our limited attention span?

With the advent of the digital age and the emergence of various platforms, we have experienced snack culture?enjoying content in short bursts while on the move, such as webtoons or web dramas. However, as the environment has become one where anyone can easily create content rather than just passively consuming it, the explosive growth of short form content trends has been driven mainly by Millennials and Generation Z actively expressing themselves and communicating through videos.

However, short form is not the only answer. Quibi, a U.S. company that launched a 10-minute video service earlier this year and received much attention, eventually ceased operations due to poor performance. Quibi, short for Quick Bites, offered paid content that could be consumed quickly but failed to win consumers’ hearts due to a lack of diverse content. On the other hand, KakaoTV, which revamped its service in September to provide original content under 20 minutes, recorded 30,000 cumulative views within three weeks and is sailing smoothly. This suggests that the value obtained from a video is more important than its length.

Short and impactful short form content can attract attention, but if it does not provide fun and empathy, it is hard to be loved. Similarly, even long videos can be loved if they offer useful information and emotional impact. Ultimately, the value provided by the content is more important than the format of video length. While there is joy in creating and sharing videos oneself, there is also great pleasure in watching professionally produced videos. It is desirable for various content to be produced in different lengths according to their purpose and content.

Depending on who produces it, digital content is classified into Professional Generated Content (PGC), Professional User Generated Content (PUGC), and User Generated Content (UGC). Various video platforms play the role of laying the 'stage' so that content can be easily created, consumed, and shared by these diverse entities. This is why we can expect to encounter even more diverse content in the future.

The welcome aspect of the short form content trend is that it increases diversity not by remaining passive consumers of content but by actively producing and consuming content. The focus should be not on the format of short form but on why content is consumed and what value it provides.

Choi Se-jung, Professor, Department of Media and Graduate School, Korea University

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.