TikTok competitor Snapchat Spotlight has become a major hit. Here’s why

A person holding a cellphone up to lights.

Snap recently came out with a new feature on Snapchat called Spotlight. The fact that Snapchat made a feature so similar to TikTok is not surprising, considering social media apps tend to copy each other. 

I did not see myself enjoying TikTok when the app gained popularity among the younger generation. Then one day, I was scrolling through the discovery page on Instagram and saw a video of a girl who bought a cactus from Walmart. 

Somehow this simple one minute video about a girl who couldn’t figure out what to name her cactus had me dying from a fit of laughter. After rewatching the video multiple times, I noticed TikTok’s watermark in the corner. I was surprised. A TikTok giving Vine energy took me aback! 

However, my stubborn self couldn’t let go of the glory days of Vine and move on to a new app so easily. I wouldn’t be able to avoid TikTok’s lure forever though. TikTok videos were starting to fill up on Instagram, then I saw the video that made me a fan of TikTok, the kombucha girl video. The number of expressions on this girl’s face from drinking kombucha was hysterical. 

Then Snap rolled out its new feature in November. Wow, another TikTok, how exciting! (Note the sarcasm.) Spotlight has reached a major milestone with 100 million users. This could make TikTokkers nervous since Snapchat is a well-known brand. 

Not to mention the company forks out money to the Spotlight users with the most viral videos of the day. When the feature launched Snap announced Snappers could get a nice chunk of the $1 million which they put forth each day. A pretty genius plan to gain growth.

According to fourth-quarter earnings reports, the upstart challenger has attracted a huge fan base. One source said the app has enjoyed a high number of user submissions — about 175,000 per day. 

Social media went through a tough period the last four years where it became a pothole for everyone to dump their anger and frustration. Spotlight is more of a fun app for people to share funny videos.

It appears that many of the Spotlight videos are of similar quality to TikTok videos. Although it seems overall that Spotlight videos are shorter and have meme-like captions on many of the videos.

Katie Feeney, who is from Maryland, made up to $1 million from her Spotlight snaps. The least amount Snappers make is $250 for their snaps. So far, Snap has dolled out $42 million.

The giant TikTok has over 1 billion users with 83% of them posting videos.  One outstanding TikTok creator is Mikayla Nogueira. Before TikTok, Mikalya was just an average girl who worked at Ulta Beauty. Now she sits at 3.9 million followers! Mikalya no longer works at Ulta, lives in her own apartment, and makes TikTok makeup videos full time.

The app creation came from a man named Zhang Yiming who is 35 years old and from China. Zhang Yiming had a news company on the internet which used A.I. before he created TikTok.

Snapchat is not the exciting app it used to be. Many people do not use the app as frequently anymore. At this point, the only thing exciting is when your friend actually uses words in their snap instead of just a corner of their face. Let’s be honest, it’s just for the snap streaks at this point. 

With a plethora of video apps out there, it is hard to say whether Spotlight stands a chance. For example, the 800-pound gorilla named YouTube has as many as 2 billion users with over 3 billion searches on a monthly basis.

Another app that casts a shadow on Spotlight is Clubhouse. This app was launched in 2020 and is available on iPhones. Clubhouse allows you to legally listen to conversations by quite exciting individuals such as Elon Musk!

Overall, Spotlight seems to be a fun new feature for Snappers to enjoy. As of now, it is gaining more and more users. TikTok needs to step up its game to keep up with Spotlight’s rising popularity.