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Joseph Melles is a content creator who has made thousands from Snap’s Spotlight feature, but he is now planning to post his content elsewhere after payments from the company have started to dry up.
Courtesy of Joseph Melles

Joseph Melles had been working at Wendy’s for a few months when he began to post videos to Snapchat’s Spotlight feature in hopes of landing some of the $1 million per day prize money the company was offering for videos that went on the app. 

Melles started posting videos in March, and Snap, the company that makes Snapchat, sent him a message in April offering him thousands of dollars after one of his videos racked up 300,000 views in 24 hours. Melles got a $19,600 payment from Snap for the video, and he quit his Wendy’s job a few days later.

“I was just in shock,” said Melles, 18 of Colorado.

Snapchat set the bar last year when it announced it would pay out Spotlight creators from a pot of $1 million per day that the company promised it would continue to pay at least through 2020.

The social media giant minted a new class of millionaires, changing hundreds of lives. But that all began to change when the company announced on May 20 that it would no longer pay $1 million per day. Instead, Snap would pay “millions” per month starting June 1. A Snap spokeswoman told CNBC the new payout amount is in the “double-digit” millions each month, but declined to give a specific figure.

Now, complaining that payments are dwindling ever since that change, these creators are in search of other short-form video platforms where they can find similar hefty payments they had once gotten from Snap. 

Despite making a living off Snap for the better part of this year, Melles said he hasn’t posted a video to Spotlight since June. Although he was once posting as many as 100 videos per day, Melles said Snap’s erratic payments since June 1 have demotivated him from creating more content for Spotlight. 

“It’s sad because I worked really hard every day putting the hours in, but they haven’t paid me,” he said. 

Melles is among a migration of social media users who are taking their content-creating talents from Snapchat’s Spotlight feature and heading to other paying services. Social media companies are in a fierce battle over getting creators to prioritize individual apps. Companies like Snap, Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter are courting creators to try and get them to spend more time on each individual platform, so they can fill the app’s content feeds to draw more advertising revenue. 

“If they keep on skipping people like this, I feel like a lot of people will leave,” said Melles, who now spends his time creating YouTube videos. 

Despite these complaints, Snap’s spokespeople told CNBC that the company remains heavily invested in paying creators and is now reaching all-time highs for creators who submit content to Spotlight on a daily basis. The company, however, did not specify an exact figure for this all-time high.

“We have seen incredible creativity and growth on Spotlight this year, including a tripling of daily submissions quarter-over-quarter and all-time highs in the daily number of creators posting to Spotlight since June 1,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement. “While this growth has made our incentive program more competitive, more creators are receiving Spotlight payouts than ever before, and we have recently rolled out a wide variety of new programs and tools to help creators continue to grow and monetize with Snapchat.” 

Snap also noted that restructuring its payout program allowed the company the flexibility to support creators who cater to niche communities as opposed to determining pay outs based solely on the absolute engagement that a single video gets.

Neda Anvar is a content creator who has made thousands from Snap’s Spotlight feature, but he is now planning to post his content elsewhere after payments from the company have started to dry up.
Courtesy of Neda Anvar

‘Going H.A.M.’ for $1 million a day

Snap launched Spotlight in November 2020 as its answer to TikTok and Facebook’s Instagram Reels. The company rolled out Spotlight along with a daily pool of more than $1 million as an incentive to motivate users to submit content to the new feature. 

That pile of cash drew in numerous teens and young adults with a surplus of free time during their virtual school and work days throughout the pandemic. These creators would upload numerous videos a day in hopes that one or two might go viral and warrant payment. 

Neda Anvar, 23 of California, was among them. She began making Spotlight videos in February after hearing from some friends that there was money to be made. The first time Anvar got paid, she received a modest $3,000 for one of her videos. But not long after, one of her friends was paid $100,000 by Snap for two of his videos that went viral. 

“After we got those initial first payments around February, then we started going H.A.M.,” Anvar said. (H.A.M. is a crude acronym popularized by Kanye West and Jay-Z, which roughly means to do something excessively.) “I work from home, so I kind of made it my second full-time job when I had little breaks in between my job.”

Anvar focused her content on just making short, catchy videos designed to grab audiences’ attention and lead them to watch multiple times, wracking up her videos’ view counts. The goal was for her videos to get at least 100,000 views in a 24-hour period. Prior to June 1, that was the rough threshold for knowing a video would get paid, she said. The method was to post multiple videos per day. 

“It was all about consistency and probability. One of them was bound to go viral on Spotlight,” said Anvar, whose system worked. By her count, Anvar has earned approximately $130,000 from Snap in 2021. 

For many of these creators, the money was life changing.  

Jhordyn Gaddy, 25 of Missouri, was “a completely broke kid” before he started posting Spotlight videos in November. Gaddy’s cellphone service had been turned off and his car was about to be repossessed, but after he read on Twitter about Snap’s $1 million per day Spotlight program, he posted 10 videos. One of those went viral, and Snap notified Gaddy he’d receive a payment for nearly $19,000.

“When they actually sent the money, my jaw hit the floor,” Gaddy said. 

Not long after, Gaddy took his Snap Spectacles, Snap’s computerized glasses with cameras designed for making Snapchat videos, and used them to record the view from the top of Pikes Peak in Missouri. He uploaded the video, and it racked up views over two days. Snap paid him twice for the video for a total of $93,000.

“This completely changed my life from where I was to where I am now,” said Gaddy, who used some of the money to turn his phone back on, pay off his car, buy his mom a Louis Vuitton purse and buy his little sister a car. 

“I made a few big purchases, but I still have a lot of money left,” Gaddy said. 

For Snap, the million dollar a day program was money well spent. It was able to quickly grow time spent on Spotlight and became one of its most used features. Snap said that in its second quarter, investing in Spotlight contributed approximately $76 million to its cost of revenue. 

Snap in April said Spotlight has reached 125 million monthly active users. In the company’s latest earnings call, Snap said Spotlight’s average daily content submissions more than tripled when compared to the prior quarter, it said. In the U.S. alone, daily time spent on Spotlight grew more than 60% since the first quarter, Snap added.

At the same time, the app grew to 293 million daily active users users overall this prior quarter. 

Jhordyn Gaddy is a content creator who has made thousands from Snap’s Spotlight feature, but he is now planning to post his content elsewhere after payments from the company have started to dry up.
Courtesy of Jhordyn Gaddy

‘No rhyme or reason’

Upset Snapchat creators can point to a date when they say things shifted with the company: June 1. 

Snap announced earlier this year it would change its incentive structure. Instead of a daily offering, users could earn from a pool of millions of dollars per month. When announcing the change in May, Snap said more than 5,400 creators had collectively earned over $130 million.

The company was still offering what was presented as hefty incentives, so many creators believed they’d still earn enough to justify their content creation. What they did not expect was how random the payments would become, many creators who spoke with CNBC said. 

Whereas before creators could reliably count on a payment if one of their videos went viral with more than hundreds of thousands of views within a day, now it is more of a raffle as to who gets paid. Several users chatting about their woes on the app Discord in a group called “Snapchat Spotlight” told CNBC they have had videos with millions of views in a 24-hour period since June 1 that did not receive any payment. Meanwhile, videos with fewer views might receive payments. 

Spotlight creators say there was a method to how Snap paid them prior to June 1, but now, there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who gets paid. 

“I simply just want to know why I’m not getting paid for my videos,” said Caren Babaknia, who is one of the moderators of the Discord group. Babaknia, 24 of the state of Washington, said they have earned about $250,000 from Spotlight. 

Many of the creators in the Discord server said they feel Snap should pay them for their videos that have gone viral since June 1. Others say they simply want better communication from Snap so they can better understand how the company is determining who gets paid. The creators say there is no way to communicate directly with the company. There is a support email they can reach out to, but whenever they do, all they receive is an automated response. 

“Now it’s like ‘Oh I got 300,000 views. Maybe, if I’m really lucky, I’ll get paid,'” Anvar said. “Is it worth making content anymore because it seems like it’s a random raffle who gets paid and who doesn’t.”

Caren Babaknia is a content creator who has made thousands from Snap’s Spotlight feature, but he is now planning to post his content elsewhere after payments from the company have started to dry up.
Courtesy of Caren Babaknia

Creators jump ship to Instagram, YouTube and TikTok

The decrease in payments, the erratic nature of who gets paid and the lack of communication from Snap is why many of the Spotlight creators who spoke with CNBC said they’re considering leaving the platform or have already taken their content elsewhere. 

Melles’ YouTube account, for example, was recently monetized, which means he’ll soon be able to start earning money for the content he posts on YouTube’s video service. Anvar said she is planning to post videos to TikTok moving forward. TikTok doesn’t pay for content as much as Snap does, but there are brand deal opportunities to be had on that service, she said. Gaddy said he has pretty much stopped posting Spotlight videos and plans to instead post videos on YouTube and start a podcast where he talks about social media. And Babaknia said he is now also posting his content on TikTok and Instagram Reels.

“Once they stopped paying $1 million a day they stopped putting their care into it,” Babaknia said. 

Some creators indicated they’re planning on heading to YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. That’s because both of the companies recently have ramped up their efforts to draw in creators, each offering their own creator funds.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month the company would pay out $1 billion now through 2022 to users who create content for its Facebook and Instagram social networks. The company also introduced a Reels Summer Bonus that would pay U.S. users who create great Reels content for Instagram. 

Google announced its YouTube Shorts Fund in May, which will pay out $100 million to creators over the course of 2021 to 2022. 

The Snap spokesperson told CNBC that there are other opportunities for creators to generate revenue through Snapchat besides Spotlight submissions. These avenues include Syndicated Shows on Snapchat’s Discover feature, an upcoming Gifting program, a Creator Marketplace and commerce opportunities. Snap also added that more features and creator programs will be announced soon.

Fortunately for Snap, however, its Spotlight feature is already populated with content. When Spotlight first launched, Snap relied on the $1 million per day pool to stimulate the creation of content. That prize money served to create a flywheel effect where now Spotlight has a steady stream of content and may no longer need a monetary boost. 

The creators who are leaving Spotlight say they’re grateful for the money they earned from Snap, but they think the company is making a mistake. Some of the creators said they’ve already noticed a decrease in the quality of the content found on Spotlight as a result of the drop in payments. 

“From what I see on Spotlight, there’s no good content. Everything I see on Spotlight I could see on TikTok or Reels or YouTube Shorts. It’s pretty much all the same content now,” Gaddy said. “It used to be like actually looking at somebody’s Snapchat story. Spotlight used to be way more interesting.”

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Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing rival chipmaker Intel

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Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing rival chipmaker Intel

CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, speaks during the launch of the supercomputer Gefion, where the new AI supercomputer has been established in collaboration with EIFO and NVIDIA at Vilhelm Lauritzen Terminal in Kastrup, Denmark October 23, 2024.

Ritzau Scanpix | Mads Claus Rasmussen | Via Reuters

Nvidia is replacing rival chipmaker Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a shakeup to the blue-chip index that reflects the boom in artificial intelligence and a major shift in the semiconductor industry.

Intel shares were down 1% in extended trading on Friday. Nvidia shares rose 1%.

The switch will take place on Nov. 8. Also, Sherwin Williams will replace Dow Inc. in the index, S&P Dow Jones said in a statement.

Nvidia shares have climbed over 170% so far in 2024 after jumping roughly 240% last year, as investors have rushed to get a piece of the AI chipmaker. Nvidia’s market cap has swelled to $3.3 trillion, second only to Apple among publicly traded companies.

Companies including Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon are purchasing Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), such as the H100, in massive quantities to build clusters of computers for their AI work. Nvidia’s revenue has more than doubled in each of the past five quarters, and has at least tripled in three of them. The company has sginaled that demand for its next-generation AI GPU called Blackwell is “insane.”

With the addition of Nvidia, four of the six trillion-dollar tech companies are now in the index. The two not in the Dow are Alphabet and Meta.

While Nvidia has been soaring, Intel has been slumping. Long the dominant maker of PC chips, Intel has lost market share to Advanced Micro Devices and has made very little headway in AI. Intel shares have fallen by more than half this year as the company struggles with manufacturing challenges and new competition for its central processors.

Intel said in a filing this week that the board’s audit and finance committee approved cost and capital reduction activities, including lowering head count by 16,500 employees and reducing its real estate footprint. The job cuts were originally announced in August.

The Dow contains 30 components and is weighted by the share price of the individual stocks instead of total market value. Nvidia put itself in better position to join the index in May, when the company announced a 10-for-1 stock split. While doing nothing to its market cap, the move slashed the price of each share by 90%, allowing the company to become a part of the Dow without having too heavy a weighting.

The switch is the first change to the index since February, when Amazon replaced Walgreens Boots Alliance. Over the years, the Dow has been playing catchup in gaining exposure to the largest technology companies. The stocks in the index are chosen by a committee from S&P Dow Jones Indices.

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Super Micro’s 44% plunge this week wipes out stock’s gains for the year

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Super Micro's 44% plunge this week wipes out stock's gains for the year

Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7. 

Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Super Micro investors continued to rush the exits on Friday, pushing the stock down another 9% and bringing this week’s selloff to 44%, after the data center company lost its second auditor in less than two years.

The company’s shares fell as low as $26.23, wiping out all of the gains for 2024. Shares had peaked at $118.81 in March, at which point they were up more than fourfold for the year. Earlier that month, S&P Dow Jones added the stock to the S&P 500, and Wall Street was rallying around the company’s growth, driven by sales of servers packed with Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors.

Super Micro’s spectacular collapse since March has wiped out roughly $55 billion in market cap and left the company at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. On Wednesday, as the stock was in the midst of its second-worst day ever, Super Micro said it will provide a “business update” regarding its latest quarter on Tuesday, which is Election Day in the U.S.

The company’s recent challenges date back to August, when Super Micro said it would not file its annual report on time with the SEC. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company and wrote in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was in the early stages of a probe into the company.

Super Micro disclosed on Wednesday that Ernst & Young had resigned as its accounting firm just 17 months after taking over from Deloitte & Touche. The auditor said it was “unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management.”

A Super Micro spokesperson told CNBC that the company “disagrees with E&Y’s decision to resign, and we are working diligently to select new auditors.” Super Micro does not expect matters raised by Ernst & Young to “result in any restatements of its quarterly financial results for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, or for prior fiscal years,” the representative said.

Analysts at Argus Research on Thursday downgraded the stock in the intermediate term to a hold, citing the Hindenburg note, reports of the Justice Department investigation and the departure of Super Micro’s accounting firm, which the analysts called a “serious matter.” Argus’ fears go beyond accounting irregularities, with the firm suggesting that the company may be doing business with problematic entities.

“The DoJ’s concerns, in our view, may be mainly about related-party transactions and about SMCI products ending up in the hands of sanctioned Russian companies,” the analysts wrote.

In September, the month after announcing its filing delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq indicating that its late status meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline would be mid-November.

Though Super Micro hasn’t filed financials with the SEC since May, the company said in an August earnings presentation that revenue more than doubled for a third straight quarter. Analysts expect that, for the fiscal first quarter ended September, revenue jumped more than 200% to $6.45 billion, according to LSEG. That’s up from $2.1 billion a year earlier and $1.9 billion in the same fiscal quarter of 2023.

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Apple to buy Pixelmator, the iPhone image editing app with AI features

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Apple to buy Pixelmator, the iPhone image editing app with AI features

Peopl walk outside Steve Jobs Theater at the Apple Park campus before Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2024.

Nic Coury | AFP | Getty Images

Apple will buy Pixelmator, the creator of image editing apps for Apple’s iPhone and Mac platforms, Pixelmator announced Friday in a blog post.

Pixelmator, a Lithuanian company, was founded in 2007, and in recent years has been best known for Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro, which compete with Adobe Photoshop. It also makes Photomator, a photo editing app.

Apple has highlighted Pixelmator apps over the years in its keynote product launches. In 2018, Apple named Pixelmator Pro its Mac App of the year, citing the company’s enthusiastic embrace of Apple’s machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, such as removing distracting objects from photos or making automated color adjustments.

We’ve been inspired by Apple since day one, crafting our products with the same razor-sharp focus on design, ease of use, and performance,” Pixelmator said in its blog post.

Apple does not acquire as many large companies as its Silicon Valley rivals. It prefers to make smaller acquisitions of companies with products or people that it can use to create Apple features. Neither Pixelmator nor Apple provided a price for the transaction.

Pixelmator said in its blog post that there “will be no material changes to the Pixelmator Pro, Pixelmator for iOS, and Photomator apps at this time.”

Earlier this week, Apple released the first version of Apple Intelligence, a suite of features that includes photo editing abilities such as Clean Up, which can remove people or objects from photos using AI.

Apple has acquired other popular apps that received accolades at the company’s product launches and awards ceremonies.

In 2020, Apple bought Dark Sky, a weather app that eventually became integrated into Apple’s default weather app. In 2017, it bought Workflow, an automation and macro app that eventually became Shortcuts, the iPhone’s scripting app, as well as the groundwork for a more capable Siri assistant.

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