Background: Paramount+ is the streaming service owned by Paramount, the global media and entertainment giant. The company owns major TV networks like CBS in the US, pay-TV brands such as MTV and Comedy Central, and a massive film studio behind franchises like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible. More recently, Paramount merged with Skydance in a $28 billion USD merger.

What happened: A leaked internal Paramount document has revealed discussions about reshaping the Paramount+ app. Executives are exploring a TikTok-style short-form video feed within the mobile app, potentially featuring up to one million short clips. Initially, those clips would be drawn from Paramount’s existing shows and movies.

What else: Longer term, Paramount is also considering user-generated content. And Paramount aren't the only ones - Netflix, Disney+ and others are also testing short-form video formats. As traditional TV viewing declines and TikTok-style consumption continues to rise, streaming platforms and social apps are increasingly starting to look and behave like each other.

What's the key learning

💡Platform convergence is when different types of platforms start borrowing each other’s core features… until they start to blur together. Social apps are pushing into longer-form content, while streaming services are experimenting with shorter-form video. Ultimately, they are all competing for the same thing: more user attention.

💡The average time spent on streaming services in the US is around 1 hour and 10 minutes per day, while the average TikTok user spends more than 1 hour and 30 minutes per day on the app. That attention gap is hard for streaming platforms to ignore.

💡A short-form feed could act as a “front door” to the app - encouraging users to open it every day, rather than only when a new episode or movie drops.