Snapchat has never been considered a happy valley for social media content creators, many of whom have been attracted to other platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok which are better monetization pipelines.
But that could change soon. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel recently announced the launch of the Creator Marketplace, which is “a platform for brands to work with creators, in order to create better ads”.
These types of platforms are fast becoming a staple of social media (TikTok started one last year, Facebook is considering adding one), and its adoptions are illustrative of the industry wide push to better reward influencers on these sites.
How are top Creators finding success on Snapchat? Join us to listen and learn from Jacque Slade, Kandee Johnson, and Katie Feeney as they talk us through their Snapchat journeys and experiences with Snap Originals, Shows, and Spotlight. #SnapPartnerSummit https://t.co/EcRV7zDFVs pic.twitter.com/dAVg7Wxc46
— Snapchat (@Snapchat) May 20, 2021
“Snapchat is creating a way for content creators to get started on the platform, and build a business there,” says Zach Lupei, group product manager at Snapchat, who worked on the development of this product.
Trying to make a difference
In this decade of Snapchat’s existence -the app launched July 11, 2008- it has been mainly a messaging tool.
That approach started to change some years ago, with the addition of the “Discover” page, a section of the app that mostly contains news, gossip, and any sort of celebrity drama imaginable. However, this section feels curated, as it is powered by brands mostly. It misses the sense of community apps like TikTok thrive on, which live off average users posting content and being creators
That’s why Snapchat -in an effort to change that- added the Spotlight tab last November and paid up to $1 million per day to users who uploaded clips there, rewarding viral videos.
However, even if it was once willing to pay millions, as Taylor Lorenz wrote, no longer. That sudden “change” is to “give us more flexibility to reward more creators and more markets abroad”, said Jim Shepherd, Head of Talent Partnerships at Snapchat.
The truth is apps can pay creators a ton of money but bestowing fame is another story. As Lorenz put it:
“For brands to take notice of Snapchat stars, the platform must demonstrate that it is a place that incubates and fosters talent — and popularity. Most people on the internet know what a TikTok star is, but an archetypal Snapchat creator has yet to be defined.”
The amount of money platforms are going to throw at creators over the next 5-10 years is going to be wild.
— Austin Rief ☕️ (@austin_rief) April 15, 2021
More platforms feel the urge and the real need of paying creators, just to name a few: TikTok has the creator fund, Twitch and Youtube have the partner programs, Instagram has introduced tipping during live streams, Twitter will also allow tipping.
This @evanspiegel memo to Snap employees is a great read. Here's a thread with some thoughts on Snap's competitive advantage, its goal to be profitable in 2019, and its content strategy.https://t.co/shzdZYBHxn
— Turner Novak 🍌🧢 (@TurnerNovak) October 7, 2018
About those monetizable features
The Snap Partner Summit 2021 recap revealed that Snapchat now has 500 million Monthly Active Users (MAU’s) and 280 million Daily Active Users (DAU’s), which means that a little more than half of the users check the app daily.
It also reaches 90% of 13-24-year-olds in the U.S., U.K., France and Australia, and has grown “100% year-over-year for the last 5 quarters in India”, an emerging market for many tech companies.
Snapchat is betting it all on digital representation and augmented reality, you just need to watch the first ten minutes of the Snap Partner Summit 2021 to notice that. But besides what they want to become, the two most powerful features that hold that true today are the Snap Map and Bitmoji. As Rex Woodbury tweeted: Snap is using Bitmoji to quietly build its own path to the metaverse.
1/ Bitmoji has 200 million daily active users.
— Rex Woodbury (@rex_woodbury) May 27, 2021
In the future, we'll all spend time as avatars online and we'll look back on Bitmoji as one of the first and one of the most underrated manifestations of digital identity. pic.twitter.com/Eu3Kx7zgLh
A metaverse that will further expand thanks to Snapchat newest launch: Spectacles. The first pair of glasses that bring augmented reality to life. As of now, they’re only available for creators, and “the idea is to encourage a small portion of the 200,000 people who already make AR effects in Snapchat to experiment with creating experiences for the new Spectacles”, The Verge reports.
The future of shopping may also be on Snapchat, and brands like Prada, Farfetch, and Piaget are among some of the early adopters of the AR technology Snap supplies. According to analysts consulted by Vogue Business, this provides Snap a competitive advantage, because “virtual try-on specifically has been a significant and largely elusive goal for e-commerce”.
Dig Deeper, Sources & Additional Reading:
- Snap Partner Summit 2021 Recap | Turner’s Blog
- Oh, Snap | The Publish Press
- Snapchat boosts AR try-on tools: Farfetch, Prada dive in | Vogue Business
- For creators, Snap both gives and takes away | The Information