Conversation 3 – Jeyslin Acosta

The Snapchat new feature “Spotlight” is described in the article “Snapchat Wants You to Post. It is Willing to Pay Millions” by Taylor Lorenz. It discussed the potential of the influencer career as well as the trend of social media revolution. A feature called Spotlight was introduced by Snapchat, which is a  platform for sharing short videos similar to TikTok. Snapchat is evolving into a new class of social media app from a messaging platform, and it gives influencers a big income share. We learned from the article that influencers were given a significant sum of money by Spotlight. A TikTok influencer who also uploads videos to Snapchat, Cam Cassy, 19, made $3 million from Spotlight. There are other examples that are comparable to Spotlight. Other influencers that have made an average of over a million dollars include Andrea Romo, Dan Newman, Katie Feeney, Cj OperAmericano, and Joey Rogoff. The platform that pays them the most at the moment is Snapchat. It intrigued them in because they might earn good money as influencers.Influencers in the spotlight share some traits. They are children. Most of them are Gen Z, while some of them are members of Gen Y. Between about 18 to 27 years old. The ability to change young people’s lives has made becoming a video creator and influencer the popular employment choice for this generation.Competition and challenges exist for Spotlight as well. Due of its popularity peak and emphasis, TikTok is a difficult rival for Spotlight. TikTok is not yet recognized as Spotlight.It also lacks the influence to provide influencers enough exposure. Additionally, spotlight divides its earnings with its users. As more users joined Spotlight, it might experience the same problems with market saturation as TikTok.

I was first exposed to social media at a very young age, I was able to create my first Facebook page as soon as I was 10 years old. In the fourth grade, I recall that my parents would constantly monitor Facebook, that was only the condition my father had given me. I rapidly opened more social media platforms as I became older. Starting from KIK, Twitter, Instagram, and of course, Snapchat. As I’ve grown older, I’ve had to realize that social media isn’t really a good environment for developing kids. These “influencers” could easily persuade me. Because of social media, I think this is where my body dysmorphia first presented itself. I had the idea that I had to appear like these other females who were considered to be “pretty” since a very young age. Social media is still not as wonderful as it first appears; there is a lot of drama online, and people continuously harassment one another and engage in personal attacks. Pinterest is the media without the social component, which is why I prefer it. I primarily use TikTok because I enjoy watching hilarious videos there. If I could change anything about social media today, I would probably prevent kids from creating profiles like this when they are still very young and let them be kids. complying with the reading of “Snapchat Wants You to Post. It’s Willing to Pay Millions,” and I can understand why many people left their regular jobs to pursue greater financial success on these platforms. I think that as time goes on, more people will require work as the globe changes. However, I do believe that these platforms will eventually fade away. Facebook and Twitter, for instance, are rarely used by individuals in this generation, and when they are, it’s usually to watch entertaining videos, for which we now have platforms like TikTok and Snapchat Spotlight. These applications will eventually be replaced by new platforms as well.