Summary
In the article “Snapchat wants you to post. It’s willing to pay millions.” By Taylor Lorenz, The author talks about a spotlight feature on snapchat. Which pays you to post videos. People are taking advantage of this opportunity and making hundreds and thousands of dollars just by posting content on snapchat. In the article, Lorenz shared some of the stories of how people are getting viral and rich with spotlight features. The first story that he shared in the article is about a TikTok star named Cam Casey with seven million followers. One day he decided to post a video of a science experiment which went viral on snapchat. Mr. Casey found out that there is a new spotlight feature on snapchat, where people could share their short videos. He started to think that his old videos from his phone's gallery can also go viral.
After two weeks Mr. Casey became one of the top performers on the platform and he was going to make tons of money. After his success he was encouraged to post more videos, sometimes he would post over 120 videos in a day. He had been paid around $3 million for his videos that went viral. Mr. Casey is one of the thousand people around the world who’s making money through snapchat. Snapchat has been a messaging app for years. The platform wasn't made to find and show viral content to anyone, so the company started certifying creators who had large followings in addition to celebrities, showing their public stories on the app's media portal called Discover. Snapchat started to become like other social media platforms such as TikTok. The same videos that are popular on TikTok are popular on snapchat. Dax Newman had made $30,000 on snapchat, he said it is a good opportunity to earn money by not doing much. The author shares another story of a 18 year old, high school senior named Katie Feeney who has earned over $1 million from snapchat by posting unboxing videos and other funny content. Ms. Feeney said the money she earned by posting the videos has opened up opportunities for her. She wasn’t planning to go to college because of the financial issues. Ms. Feeney said. “I now have the opportunity to go to the school of my choice.” Spotlight has given success to snapchat. Many people, especially high school students, are looking for an opportunity on snapchat to make money. Spotlight needs to provide creators not only money but also recognition in order to be successful. In some ways, followers are as valuable to dollars and create their own form of money. Snapchat needs to show that it is a place that develops skill and popularity before advertisers start paying attention to its stars. Although most people online are aware of what a TikTok star is, the meaning of the normal Snapchat creator is still unknown.
I don’t use social media a lot, I feel like whenever I use it, it distracts me from getting the work done. So I started to cut down the time that I spend on social media. Sometimes I do use it but I tried to get my work done first so I won’t have to worry about it later because once you start using it you never wanna turn it off which makes you procrastinate to get your stuff done. I only use Instagram, TikTok and Youtube, I used to use snapchat to talk to my friends. Now everyone has Instagram so I stopped using it. I never knew that snapchat has this feature called spotlight which is paying people to upload content, but I think this is a really good opportunity to earn money.
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