TikTok is the current holder of the crown when it comes to new media platforms. In recent months, however, its alleged ties to the Chinese has seen it banned in some countries, with threats to do so in others. The likes of Instagram and Snapchat have tried to capitalise on this, debuting similar short-format videos on other apps too, and the latter is finding real success with Spotlight.

Launched in November last year, a recent quarterly earnings call with Snapchat investors confirms that it has already racked up over 100 million users in the space of two months, which is mightily impressive.

“We are seeing over 175,000 video submissions per day, on average, in part due to our incentive program for creators, where we distribute over $1 million per day to the top performing videos,” CEO Evan Spiegel explained in the aforementioned call.

It is clear that the creator-driven launch of the platform, as well as the payments thereof, are key reasons why the use of Spotlight can spiked in such a short amount of time. Whether such a model is sustainable or indeed if Snapchat plans to continue with this strategy, remains to be seen.

Either way, it looks like being able to monetise the video feature for creators will prove important if Spotlight aims to overtake TikTok, which has an in excess of 690 million monthly active users.

Added to the growing competitiveness between platforms, TikTok too has a fund of $200 million earmarked to pay creators for content, and Instagram is always looking at ways for its users to earn money on Reels.

Another important element to Spotlight and Snapchat’s continued success is the looming iOS 14 update that will ask for user permission for app’s to enable ad tracking. Google is looking at something similar for Android as well, so Snapchat will want to make sure it’s compliant if it plans to grow past the current 100 million Spotlight users.