Monday, November 23, 2020

Can Snapchat take on TikTok

     In an announcement not widely heralded by news sources, Snapchat launched a feature called Spotlight.  This feature will showcase user created videos beyond friend groups and is a direct challenge to Tik Tok’s turf. Interestingly, there are several key differences with Snapchat’s new feature – videos will mostly be anonymous (unless a user has a public profile – which is very unusual). Snapchat videos also can’t be watermarked making it more difficult to upload copies of Tik Tok videos. Despite their feature differences, the playbook for growing the service is a basic one – money and lots of it. Snapchat has committed to paying creators $1 million per day through the end of the year. Despite Snapchat’s built in user base, I believe they will find it difficult to lure creators due to the anonymity of the platform. What remains to be seen is how their placement algorithm will compare to Tik Tok’s, as this is a key differentiator.

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