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The promise of viral fame has always been a draw for online content creators, but Snapchat hopes it has found a more immediate way to encourage people to post photos and videos: a share of a $ 1 million daily prize ( £ 747,000).
The messaging app will start paying its users for their most viral snapshots, as the platform moves to avoid a dreaded exodus to TikTok with a new source of user-generated content.
The new feature, called Spotlight, will be a major change in the way Snapchat users find content on the platform, and it also represents one of the most serious efforts yet by a social media company to share content. revenue with all of its users, rather than a limited selection of the most famous creators.
“Spotlight will display the most entertaining snapshots from the Snapchat community in one place and will adapt to each Snapchatter over time based on their preferences and favorites,” Snap said in a statement.
“As a way to celebrate and reward the creativity of the Snapchat community, Snap will distribute more than $ 1 million every day to Snapchatters who create the best Snaps on Spotlight, at least until the end of the year.”
The company created the new feature after realizing that videos created with the Snapchat camera regularly went viral on other platforms, such as TikTok and YouTube, because creators had little opportunity to grow their audience on Snapchat.
For users, the feed will be reminiscent of TikTok’s “For You” page, the crown jewel of the video-sharing app. But behind the scenes, Snap’s philosophy is very different.
Users must explicitly decide to post videos to Spotlight, but by default, their profiles will be hidden when they do, a move that allows creators to dabble in creating content without risking unwanted attention.
That anonymity also allows Snapchat to promote the feed as a meritocracy – one in which former fame counts for little. The videos users view on their Spotlight feed will not be affected by who they follow on the platform, and a new post from someone with millions of followers faces exactly the same hurdles as a first-time video from a new user. to reach the highest level. levels of viral fame.
The company hopes that approach will prevent celebrity users from falling into mediocrity, as well as encouraging ordinary people to produce the most entertaining videos they can.
Like the $ 1 million fund. Other platforms, such as Twitch and YouTube, have revenue-sharing agreements with top creators, but they all require a certain level of fame to qualify. Instead, Snapchat promises that any video that gets big – initially around 100,000 views in a day, the company says – will get its share of the cash.
However, before users can end up on the Spotlight feed, they will initially have to go through a level of human moderators, who categorize the video, which helps with some of the personalization elements, and makes sure it conforms to the company’s content guidelines. These include expected limitations, such as a prohibition on copyright infringement or underage drinking, as well as a few others that fit the idiosyncratic approach of platforms: “Spotlight is an entertainment platform, rather than a space for overtly political news or content, “the guidelines say, adding that” should be vertical videos with sound, “rather than still images or text-only snapshots.
Despite stiff competition from TikTok and Instagram, Snapchat remains one of the largest social media apps in the world. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Snap said it had 249 million daily users, a year-on-year growth of 18%. More than 40% of the US Gen Z population viewed sports content on Snapchat’s publisher platform Discover in August, he added.
Quick hits
Damn daniel
Teen Snapchatter Josh Holz’s videos of his friend Daniel’s white Vans sneakers unexpectedly went viral in 2016, prompting the couple on the Ellen Degeneres show.
Anime lens
Snapchat’s AI-powered lenses have regularly gone viral in their own right, and a filter that turned users into Japanese anime characters is its most recent hit, though many of the most successful videos were made on Snapchat and later. were posted on TikTok.
Jaden Smith
Snapchat’s Discover platform is a more traditional publisher-run space, where the company and media partners produce short-form content, such as this September’s Jaden Smith series The Solutions Committee, which addressed social justice. and racial and urged viewers to vote.
Dance challenges
At times, the company seems to actively seek the success of Tiktok. In a recent lens collection, Snapchat partnered with four TikTok stars to create lenses, which worked with specific dance trends, to encourage users to film in one app and post in the other.
Jeremy corbyn
In 2016, the then Labor leader became the first head of a major UK party to join Snapchat, and their stories were briefly the talk of Westminster.
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