Snap compensated creators on its TikTok clone with $250 million this year
Snap compensated creators on its TikTok clone with $250 million this year
On Monday, Snap announced that it has paid more than $250 million to more than 12,000 creators on Spotlight, the company's clone of the TikTok video app. Spotlight, in contrast to Snapchat's ephemeral friend-to-friend texting, allows users to communicate with a large number of people at the same time. According to Snap, creators are now publishing three times as frequently as they were last year, when Spotlight was first introduced to the platform.
It's no secret that the competition for domination in short-form video is becoming increasingly heated. In the wake of TikTok becoming one of the fastest apps to reach one billion monthly active users, competitors such as Snapchat Spotlight, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts instituted creator funding to incentivize users to create content specifically for their respective platforms. Snapchat's initial $1 million-per-day rewards were reduced in September due to an overabundance of "copycat material," while Instagram Reels would not promote submissions that included a TikTok watermark. LinkedIn, Spotify, Netflix, Reddit, and Twitter are all experimenting with TikTok-inspired feeds, as are other popular social media platforms.
In fact, according to Snap, 65 percent of Spotlight entries include a Snapchat creative tool, such as an augmented reality lens. The Cartoon Style 3D Lens, which went viral last summer, garnered 2.8 billion impressions in its first week, is the most notable example of this.
Through its separate Story Studio app, which was unveiled in May during the Snap Partner Summit, Snap is also catering to the needs of content creators. Instead of editing movies on a computer and then transferring them to a phone, as some producers do, Snap has aimed to provide users with greater flexibility. While Story Studio allows for more in-depth editing while on the go, the Spotlight for web app allows users to submit content without having to leave their computers or laptops.
Additional revenue streams for Spotlight creators include in-app gifting and Snap's creator marketplace, which enables businesses to communicate more easily with augmented reality developers and influencers through the use of augmented reality. While creators receive a portion of their money in the form of gifts, they keep all of the revenue made through the creator marketplace for themselves.
