Written by Aiyun Lee, Ernie Sulastri and Marie Ng.

Spotlight: Snapchat’s new in-app entertainment platform for user-generated content

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Snapchat recently announced its new curated entertainment content platform – Spotlight. This in-app entertainment platform is a new way for users to discover best and news user-generated content.

“We built Spotlight to be a place where anyone’s content can take center stage – without needing a public account, or an influencer following. It’s a fair and fun place for Snapchatters to share their best Snaps and see perspectives from across the Snapchat community” Snapchat announced.

Spotlight will be moderated, with no public comments allowed but tailored to individual users over time based on their preferences and favourites. The ranking algorithm takes into account a variety of factors such as the amount of time spent watching Snaps, if it is favorited, and if it’s shared with friends, or negative factors, like if the viewer skipped watching the Snap quickly.

The best part for creators is that Snapchat is paying USD $1million everyday for creators to submit their content as a way for them to reward and celebrate the creativity of their community.

Spotlight is very much a TikTok clone, albeit it being an in-app section within Snapchat itself. These videos can be up to 60 seconds long and are not able to be watermarked at this stage. This means that users can download their videos from platforms like TikTok and upload them to Spotlight for a chance of making a quick buck.

At the moment, Spotlight is launching in 11 countries – US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and France, with more countries coming soon.

Instagram provides an additional feature, ‘Giving Tuesday’ to highlight how people can support non-profits and SMBs

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Instagram is trying a new addition to the Instagram stories feed,‘Giving Tuesday’. It aims to highlight how the audience can provide support on Giving Tuesday and amplify good acts of generosity with a new collaborative story, featured with a dedicated donation sticker. 

As explained by Instagram:

“We’re featuring a shared “Giving Tuesday” story at the front of your Stories bar, encouraging people to support small businesses directly on Instagram. Accounts you follow who use the “I Donated” or the “Donation” sticker will be added to the shared story for a limited time.”

Instagram has used the shared Story approach for several major events, as a platform to boost community engagement and promote important causes nowadays. And with SMBs needing extra support due to the impacts on the pandemic, the support push this year takes on a different emphasis than the usual – “whether it’s through volunteering, making donations or simply making a kind gesture to someone in need”. 

It’s also testing new methods for people to create and share fundraising events for non-profits within their feed, which parent company Facebook. With this new feature, people can link to any eligible non-profit directly within their Feed post. 

Celebrate the Season of Giving!

Instagram now lets brands have more flexibility over branded content ads creation

Last year, Instagram launched Branded Content ads as an avenue for brands to broadcast and amplify brand messages through content creators. 

Now, Instagram has now upgraded these Branded Content ads, where a new workflow allows brands to create Branded Content ads first without creators posting organically. This would allow more flexibility when it comes to running Branded Content ads, giving creators the ability to approve and pause any ads published from the brand handle. 

Branded Content is useful for brands and creators alike, driving value for added visibility and discovery. Within the settings, advertisers can send a request to creators for Ad Creation Access, which creators will then accept. After the advertiser creates an ad using the creator’s handle, the creator can then approve it. 

Instagram’s other new features for Branded Content will also eventually include product tags for promotion, and will be testing it gradually. For now, Branded Content ads in Stories can use tappable elements such as hashtags, location, and @mentions. This opens up new opportunities for brands to develop even more engaging content.

Disclaimer: Featured image taken from blogs.selfy.com.