Just a few years ago, the term “influencer” was greeted with a collective growl. They were a race of social media users widely understood to be non-serious. influence climbers or sold. But the stigma around the influencer marketing business has dissipated with the rise of Gen Z. They are entrepreneurs and we call them “creators.”
According to a 2020 report Per venture capital firm SignalFire, the creators’ global economy is $ 50 million and counting. Creators are a new class of small businesses that use technology platforms to generate content and monetize their personal brands and followers. This includes everyone from kids checking toys and earning commissions through YouTube to cosplayers making selfie tips through OnlyFans. Two million global creators are already earning six figures. Data from Mediakix shows that the influencer marketing industry is projected to be worth $ 15 billion by 2022, up from $ 8 billion in 2019.
Creators attract users to technology platforms and fuel their businesses. Companies like Instagram and YouTube created the creator, and now they compete to win their loyalty, and the loyalty of their followers, with payments and constant product development.
A new paper YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says the company has paid out more than $ 30 billion to creators and media organizations over the past three years. Meanwhile, Snapchat has been handing out $ 1 million a day to creators on its platform through a show called Spotlight, which debuted on the app in November. Last summer, TikTok announced its $ 200 million creator fund.
All media companies aim to be the home of creators and a one-stop shop for social media, often playing out in a continuous game of copycat. TikTok was the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in 2018 and 2019. Last year, ByteDance’s revenue more than doubled to approximately $ 37 billion. Instagram and Snapchat responded to the success of their competitor by reflecting it with ingenuityh Reels and Spotlight, short-form video streams in the app. YouTube is currently launching its own short-form video feature, Shorts. Meanwhile, Twitter introduced Fleets, its take on Instagram Stories (which, worth mentioning, Instagram launched in 2016 to mirror Snapchat).
Looking at a few other metrics, YouTube and Instagram’s efforts appear to be paying off. In December, Instagram.com counted 4,260 daily page views per million users. It also achieved an Alexa average web traffic rank, which measures global web traffic and engagement, of 21.
YouTube Shorts reportedly has 3.5 billion daily views in India, where the company began testing the feature last fall. YouTube’s current average Alexa rank is at No. 2. Meanwhile, TikTok.com is at 122.
Facebook’s current Alexa ranking is at No. 7. The platform’s market share remains strong, but it could lag behind. Last week, Facebook released its latest annual performance update, which showed that the platform added 299 million active users throughout 2020. But, as Facebook continued to grow globally, its Daily Active User (DUA) count fell. it stalled in the US and wavered throughout the year.
Facebook started the first quarter with 195 million DUAs in the US and Canada. That number increased to 198 million in the second quarter and dropped to 195 million in the fourth quarter.
By prioritizing Instagram, Facebook could sacrifice the success of its eponymous social media platform.
About the data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online, jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings, and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and face-to-face traffic. The datasets may not be completely complete (they only take into account what is available on the web), but they can be used to measure performance factors such as staffing and sales.
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