Technology
Snapchat formally launches the TikTok rival in-app called Spotlight.
Snap is now able to compete with TikTok and will pay the developers to upload to the website. The company is publicly launching a new segment of Snapchat today called Spotlight that will surface vertical video content from users that is more meme-like and jokey than the day-to-day content Snap previously encouraged. Only imagine, literally, TikTok, except in Snapchat.
To get users to share snaps on a daily basis, the company says it will break up $1 million amongst the most successful app makers every day by the end of 2020. This suggests that if anyone has an especially viral video, they might make a significant portion of a $1 million pot. It doesn't matter if the person has a large number of subscribers; the sum that people get is largely dependent on specific views relative to other snapshots that day. Users will continue to render their video if it's successful for several days at a time.
Spotlight, which will have its own dedicated smartphone page, will be launched in 11 countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia. The videos you see in this segment can be up to 60 seconds long and as of now, can't be watermarked. This means that users can't just download their TikToks and upload them to Snapchat. If you press Spotlight, you'll see snaps programmed to what Snapchat's algorithm thinks you would love. This judgment is based more on what you've seen in the past and how long you've been watching. Anyone can upload a snap, they're just going to have to press "Spotlight" before uploading to make sure the section populates.
While the format is familiar to anybody who has ever watched TikTok, Snap says it has taken unique decisions depending on its user base. For one, Spotlight snaps won't feature a public comment section, and the profiles themselves are private by default, meaning Snapchatters will keep their accounts locked while still sharing content.
The Spotlight segment has been hinted at for months, as Snapchat revealed music in snaps back in August. The app has been without a feed for these snaps so far. The company already encourages people to upload their snapshots as part of a location where everyone can drop in and watch and get a sense of what's going on in a given area at any time. They show on the Snap Map. However unlike that feature, which is more documentary in nature, Spotlight is primarily designed for viral video formats.
With Spotlight, Snap explicitly acknowledges the popularity of TikTok's short-form viral videos, close to Instagram's admission with the launch of Reels in August. In Instagram's case, though, it specifically encourages users to post their TikTok content to the site. Instead, Snap is seeking to allow users to use their own innovative resources to combat monetization theft by keeping people in their games. Stories used to be the format that everybody chose to imitate, due to the popularity of Snapchat.
