TikTok just handed thumbnail creators a lot of business. The platform is finally, for the first time in its existence, allowing creators to upload custom thumbnails.
Short-form content has become a massive part of our industry in the last four years, and while it’s competing with long-form for views, there are still some basic quality-of-life features that short-form platforms (and short-form divisions of long-form platforms like YouTube and Twitch) are lagging behind on implementing. Features like custom thumbnails, which are one of the most-discussed topics among creators looking to appease the algorithm and grow their audiences.
Look, we get it: With short-form scrolling interfaces on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, people swipe straight from one video to the next, and there’s no place for them to see a thumbnail, so it may have been lower on platforms’ priority lists. But viewers still go to creators’ channels to browse their videos, and until now, TikTokers have only been able to select a screenshot from their video as its thumbnail–no customization allowed.
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With this new update, creators can upload completely custom images, just like they do for long-form videos on YouTube. So, we expect to see the droves of skilled YouTube thumbnail creators turn some of their attention to TikTok as a new revenue stream.
The update was spotted by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who says it’s also retroactive: Creators can now go back through their old videos and upload thumbnails for those, too.
TikTok hasn’t given any details about why it decided to make this change, but considering it’s consistently pushing creators to produce longer and longer videos, we’re thinking maybe it’s realized viewers will want to pause those 10 or 20 or 30-minute videos and come back to them–and that’s hard to do without a memorable thumbnail. There’s also the fact that Instagram‘s Reels already has custom thumbnail editing. (Not YouTube, though. Maybe it’s next?)
Whatever TikTok’s reasoning, we’re betting creators and thumbnail designers are stoked, and we’re excited to see how the landscape of short-form thumbnails shifts over the next few months.
