The multibillion dollar industry of game streamers, beauty vloggers, podcast producers, fitness influencers, newsletter writers and other social media stars who make up the “creator economy,” began long before 2021. Yet 2021 saw more platforms throw more money and resources at independent content creators than ever before.
This year, companies that had previously shown little interest in courting “influencers” or building relationships with creators began to invest in building monetization tools for them. And even more established, creator-friendly companies significantly ramped up their investments with new funds and tools.
Twitter, which had previously only ever had a single monetization feature — a video centric tool used by publishers — opted to reorient its entire platform around creators. It built Super Follows, a Patreon-esque subscription service for influencers. It launched Ticketed Spaces, so people could make money from its burgeoning live audio feature. It launched in-app tripping, and started building a newsletter platform.
Snapchat, which at one time actively shunned the idea of influencers, just announced that it had funneled more than $250 million to creators via its Spotlight feature, which launched at the end of 2020. Some of the app’s biggest stars are even getting their own shows in Snapchat Discover.
Facebook also took a renewed interest in the influencers and content creators who had long asked for more opportunities from the platform. Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly labeled creators as one of the company’s top priorities and announced a plan to invest $1 billion into tools for them by the end of 2022. Since then, Facebook and Instagram have launched a dizzying number of creator-focused updates and monetization features.
Platforms not traditionally associated with influencers also began throwing money at creators and monetization features. Pinterest launched a $500,000 creator fund and built its first monetization tools. LinkedIn — yes, that LinkedIn — announced a $25 million fund. Clubhouse added tipping. Tumblr, meanwhile, launched a subscription service for its bloggers.
Even YouTube, the most established platform for creators to make money, identified “growing the creator economy” as its top 2021 priority. It launched an all-new $100 million fund just for Shorts, its TikTok-like feature. TikTok itself, which started a $200 million fund in 2020, also launched new monetization features.
With all that money flowing in, it’s no surprise that the number of individual creators also boomed. One report from payments company Stripe, which powers payments for dozens of influencer platforms, found that the number of creators was up 48 percent in 2021, compared with 2020. And that’s just a “fraction” of the total ecosystem, according to the company.
“If the recent exponential growth of the creator economy keeps up, these 50 platforms could be supporting more than 15.5 million creators in five years,” the company wrote.
Stripe
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Source: https://www.engadget.com/how-the-pandemic-supercharged-the-creator-economy-153050958.html
