Snapchat launches Spotlight, competitor of TikTok and Instagram Reels

Snap announced on Monday the launch of Spotlight, a Snapchat feature that works like TikTok and Instagram Reels.

Spotlight will show users the best shots that have been submitted for review by over 249 million daily users of the app in a stream they can browse or tap. Spotlight shots will be played in a continuous loop until users move on to the next one.

Spotlight offers Snap an opportunity to exponentially increase the amount of entertainment content available to users. Previously, Snapchat users were limited to seeing photos posted by their friends or posted by editors in the Discover feature of the app. Spotlight will give users a centralized location where they can access an endless stream of user-generated content.

Snap will motivate users to submit clips for Spotlight review by providing a daily pool of over $ 1 million for users who create entertaining shots. The company will use a proprietary equation to determine the payout based on the number of views a snapshot gets compared to other highly viewed snapshots.

Users must be 16 or older to earn a payout. The company will offer daily payments at least until the end of 2020, a company spokesperson told CNBC. This is similar to Facebook’s TikTok and Instagram Reels, both of which have launched programs that pay creators to post photos and video clips on their products.

Spotlight won’t include any ads at launch, but a company spokesperson said Snap expects to introduce ads on the product in the coming months.

The idea for a stream containing short videos that play in continuous loop was pioneered by Vine, owned by Twitter, in 2013. Twitter shut down Vine in 2017, the same year ByteDance acquired Musical.ly. ByteDance then merged Musical.ly with TikTok in 2018. TikTok presents user videos in the same type of stream. Most recently, Instagram threw its hat into that ring with the global launch of Reels in August.

The Snap spokesperson said Spotlight is inspired by other services. In particular, many Snap users shoot videos using Snapchat’s camera and unique augmented reality features, before exporting and posting them to TikTok. Likewise, Reels inspired the company to develop Spotlight to make it easier for users to post content publicly.

Snap is hoping Spotlight will stand out on a number of key differentiators, the spokesperson said. For example, Spotlight will not include any public comments. Specifically, Spotlight will not include any overtly political content upon launch, and Snap’s policies do not allow any posts containing misinformation, the spokesperson said.

For starters, Spotlight will be available to users in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and France. Users can find Spotlight by opening the Snapchat app and swiping to the far right tab or tapping the play button icon in the lower right corner of the screen.