Snapchat Launches “Spotlight” to Compete With TikTok

• Snapchat wants to compete with TikTok now, and so it is launching “Spotlight” for short viral videos.
• The platform is going to pay one million USD to the most successful clip uploaders every day.
• The roll-out is already underway in eleven countries, but more markets will follow soon.

It is often the case in the social media space that someone copies the features that made another platform highly successful, directly competing with it and trying to keep its users "locked" in their own ecosystem. In this context, Snapchat wants to do exactly what TikTok does with short videos that go viral so easily, and so they’re launching “Spotlight.”

Since Spotlight is a new entry, though, people need some form of incentive to jump to it, and Snapchat is offering it in the form of creator payments. More specifically, the platform announced that they would allocate $1 million per day, which will be shared among those who post the most successful videos on that day. There is a minimum age requirement for this, though, and it’s 16 years old.

Called “Snaps,” the Spotlight videos need to have a vertical orientation and can be up to 60 seconds long. Only original content is allowed, so background music issues and copyright infringement, in general, must be taken into account. Also, topics relevant to gambling, weapons, drugs, excessive alcohol consumption, tobacco, and anything suspicious of fake news distribution is forbidden. So, the uploads will be actively moderated against the community guidelines.

For starters, eleven countries will get access to Spotlight, namely Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More countries will follow up shortly, but no specific timelines were provided.

When activating a Spotlight account, it is set to “private” by default, and no public comments section will be available. Users who are above the age of 18 may choose to make their profiles public later on, sharing a few things about them with a wider audience that goes beyond their friends.

Whether or not this new platform will be successful and capable of fighting TikTok is to be seen, but the monetary awards are definitely a crucial factor. TikTok is already having a hard time in the United States and recently went through a weird situation where it was forced to negotiate an acquisition by any American company.

Snapchat is owned by Snap Inc., a California-based social media company, so that part of the problem would be lifted. If only the internet worked this way, though.