MUMBAI: Snapchat has rolled out its own version of the short video format platform, ‘Spotlight’, presumably for a slice of the TikTok pie in India. While the multimedia messaging app had launched the feature with its own dedicated tab in the app in November last year in 11 countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia, it has only debuted it in India now.
Just when we thought there were too many players in the user-generated video content market, Spotlight entered the scene with a dedicated tab to the format in the Snapchat app. The videos – or Spotlight snaps, as they are referred to – surfaced in this section and can be up to 60 seconds long. To entice people to post snaps regularly, it will even pay creators to post viral content on the platform.
The new feature will piggyback on Snapchat's popularity in the market to gain new users and tap into the void left behind by TikTok’s ban in the region. However it will be competing with Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, MX TakaTak, Bolo Indya, Chingari, Roposo, Moj, to mention a few.
Snapchat’s transition into the short-video space is a clear recognition of the success of TikTok’s short-form viral videos. Instagram too had acknowledged the Chinese app’s popularity with its launch of Reels in August last year. However, unlike TikTok, Spotlight snaps won’t feature a public comments section, and users' profiles are private by default. Snapchatters can, therefore, shield their accounts from public view while still posting content in Spotlight. In fact, anyone can submit their snaps to Spotlight for others to view; you just have to tap ‘Spotlight’ when posting to send it to the section.
Snap’s ‘$1m a day’ program – where the company says it’ll divvy up $1 million between the most popular creators on the app per day – will also be available in India, celebrating and rewarding the creativity of local Indian Snapchatters and offering a chance for creators to earn a share of a $1 million daily fund. This means if someone has a particularly viral video, they might earn a large chunk of the $1 million pot. It doesn’t matter whether that person has a massive number of subscribers; the amount people receive is primarily based on unique views compared to other snaps that day. Users can continue to earn from their video if it’s popular for multiple days at a time.
The videos you’ll see in the section can be up to 60 seconds long and, as of right now, cannot be watermarked. That means people can’t just download their (or others’) viral TikToks and upload them to Snapchat. Snap is instead trying to encourage people to use its own creation tools and prevent monetisation fraud by keeping people in its app. Once you tap into Spotlight, you’ll see snaps programmed to what Snapchat’s algorithm thinks you might enjoy. Spotlight surfaces the most entertaining Snaps from the Snapchat community all in one place and will become tailored to each Snapchatter over time based on their preferences and favourites.
