Evan
Spiegel

Now that TikTok has become the zeitgeisty social media app, Snap chief Spiegel is trying to make Snapchat more TikTok-y via its Spotlight section for videos up to 60 seconds. Snapchat initially paid a total of $1 million a day to creators of Spotlight’s most popular videos, but Spiegel reduced that in September because the program was prompting too much “copycat content.” Another incentive was added in October via Spotlight Challenges, offering from $250 to $25K for videos featuring specific lenses or activities, giving the company greater influence on the content created and shared. Snapchat’s popularity trended upward as the pandemic restrictions have lifted, with daily active users growing 23% year-over-year to 293 million in Q2 2021.