Spotlight — a new Snapchat tool to compete with TikTok and Instagram (IG) Reels — is making available at least $1 million every day to attract viral creators, Snapchat said in a statement on Monday (Nov. 23).
“We designed Spotlight to entertain our community while living up to Snapchat values, with our community’s well being as a top priority. Spotlight content is moderated and doesn’t allow for public comments,” the company said.
Spotlight is launching initially in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and France.
The new tool offers a single location to watch a continual loop of the top user-generated content.
Snap is offering a daily pool of over $1 million “to users who create entertaining snaps.” Payouts are calculated using a “proprietary equation” based on the comparison of views against other highly viewed snaps.
“Our ranking algorithm looks at factors that show people are interested in a particular Snap, like: the amount of time spent watching it, if it is favorited, and if it’s shared with friends,” the statement indicated. “We focus on serving the right Snaps to the right person at the right time. We do this by trying to understand your personal preferences.”
Continuous-loop video snippets were first conceived by Twitter’s Vine in 2013, a CNBC report indicates. Vine was pulled in 2017 and at the same time, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly. ByteDance combined Musical.ly and TikTok in 2018.
The spokesperson said Spotlight was inspired by both TikTok and IG Reels. Creators often use Snapchat’s camera and augmented-reality features regardless of where they are posting.
Spotlight stands apart because it will not initially allow overtly political content and does not allow public comments, the spokesman said.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon called social commerce the future of shopping and thinks TikTok is leading the way. Walmart has a tentative deal on the table for a 7.5 percent stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations.
Facebook’s IG launched Reels in August as a way to compete with TikTok. Reels gives users the ability to create 15-second videos using IG’s camera and editing tools.
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