As TikTok navigates through turbulent times, Instagram's determined pursuit of creators highlights a pivotal moment in the social media landscape.
Image: Kon Karampelas/Pixabay
Meta-owned Instagram has been wooing creators from TikTok as the China-based video-snippet sharing app's future remains uncertain in the United States.
After officially increasing the allowed length of videos and adding a new editing tool, Meta recently began letting TikTok creators earn as much as $5,000 (R92,868) over the course of three months for posting "Reels" to Facebook and Instagram.
The "Breakthrough Bonus" program for eligible TikTok creators is intended to "help jumpstart their growth on our apps," a Meta spokesperson told AFP.
In addition, Meta is quietly offering incentives amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a month to get creators with large TikTok audiences to switch to rival platform Reels at Instagram, according to a report Wednesday in The Information.
"Meta has been trying to take advantage of the volatility around TikTok for months, and now its efforts to court TikTok creators have gone from subtle to overt," said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.
The campaign to get TikTok stars to switch allegiance to Reels comes as TikTok's future in the United States remains unsettled.
TikTok is facing down a US law that ordered the company to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the United States.
In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country on Sunday.
The executive order directed his attorney general to delay the implementation of the law for 75 days.
The TikTok ban passed due to concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the app to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion through data collection and content manipulation.
AFP
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