The Weekly App Roundup

Welcome to yet another weekly app roundup!

If you missed it, our last segments have been a bit more special — we featured apps that will help get you back in shape in 2022 and another article that talked about the best photo editing apps on the market right now to ensure that those gains are captured in their utmost glory! اضافة اعلان

This week we’ll be going over TikTok’s continued dominance in the market and their shift into subscription-based models, Twitter jumping on the NFT bandwagon, Instagram catching up to TikTok and launching their own paid versions of subscriptions, and more!

TikTok subscription model: Record, post, get paid

While most influencers in today’s market make the majority of their wealth through partnerships and advertisement posts, with the exception of YouTube, no platform genuinely was able to create a stable and monetizable feed.

While companies have been attempting to expand the scope of earnings for their users, TikTok decided not to reinvent and simply stick to what platforms such as Patreon and Facebook have done successfully for the last couple of years — rolling out the subscription model for their content creators.

While it is true that TikTok has had its tipping function available for a while now, it was not quite as successful as the platform or the creators hoped it would be. For small-time TikTok influencers, consistency in earnings is named to be one of the key factors of their long-term residence on the platform.

According to TikTok, the subscription model would enable channels to further understand and gauge their willingness to engage from a monetary perspective from their viewers, all the while ensuring a steady stream of income.

TikTok has not quite released exact details regarding the format of this agreement, and inevitably the cut that TikTok is owed. However, representatives of the monolithic company have confirmed that this feature will be implemented in the near future.

Unlike Patreon which typically starts at $5, TikTok users are able to subscribe to their favorite content creators starting at $0.99 — something previously unheard of in the C2C subscription market.  According to TikTok, enabling a low subscription floor in terms of payout total ensures that more people would be willing to engage with this model and pay it forward to those on the platform that create the most engaging content.

While Facebook and Twitter too have their own subscription models, it is anticipated that TikTok will cement itself as the leader in the space, and inadvertently attract even more talent to its already massive platform.

Twitter hops on the NFT bandwagon

Non-fungible tokens (NFT)’s are like Schrodinger’s cat — you don’t know whether or not they are legit until you jump on board and find out yourself.

While NFT’s have attracted their own fair share of controversy over the last couple of months, with some art selling for hundreds of millions — it is still without a doubt one of the most unique phenomena of our lifetime.

For the uninitiated, NFT’s are essentially “proof of purchase” or “Receipts” if you will that are purchased by fellow NFT enthusiasts.

The images of space monkeys and the like floating around the web — those are just goofy images that come along with the “actual” product.

That being said, Twitter seemed to smell opportunity and jumped on board along with the fad by enabling connectivity to users’ wallets so that users can prove they own that JPG that many trolls online tried to “steal”.

Previously, the receipt of ownership was for clout, however, Twitter users can now show off their NFT ownership, verified by Twitter.

Many users online are perplexed about this. On one hand, it would appear that Twitter is genuinely going out of their way to create a feature that puts NFT owners’ minds at ease — ensuring that no one would save their images on their devices and label them as their own.

Others however are far more skeptical of the technology overall asking questions like “why own a very expensive of a monkey to begin with?”

Whether you consider it art, or are in the boat that assumes that NFT’s are just one large Ponzi scheme, it appears that Twitter is doing everything they can to ensure that your money is well spent.

After linking your wallet to Twitter, an algorithm would detect all of the NFT’s that you currently own, then your account would have a hexagonal shape on it, showcasing the selected NFT share to the world.

Not spectacular, but, definitely the right step towards normalizing (and streamlining) NFT ownership.

Instagram is also jumping to the subscription trend

With TikTok launching their own subscription model, it comes as no surprise that Instagram would be soon to follow. Instagram has released the subscription model to 10 selected influencers on the platform for a test run.

Much like the TikTok version, subscriptions start at $0.99 and are quoted to be an easy way to engage further with viewers’ favorite influencers.

Just like TikTok, content creators may either choose to keep all content free to play for everyone and simply have users run on a “monthly donation” quota, or they may also create exclusive content that is only available to those subscribed.

This has had mostly positive reactions from the community. However, the levels of exclusivity are set by the content creator themselves, and as a result, may lead to different tiers of subscriptions leading to lost content.

Additionally, talk online has indicated that there is a high probability that even if the content is locked behind a paywall, it would be possible to simply record all of the content and post it online — effectively “pirating it”.

Time will tell where this subscription model goes for both platforms, but it is for certain that both TikTok and Instagram influencers are looking forward to the experience.

Snapchat launches parental control features

While TikTok has experienced its meteoric rise to being quite literarily the world’s most used platform, even superseding Google itself, Snapchat has been slowly gaining traction all around the world, with their userbase reportedly crossing 300 million worldwide as of the end of 2021.

However, the demographics of Snapchat users begin painting a slightly more sinister picture, a vast majority of their user base, approximately amounting to 24 percent of the 300 million, are kids that are aged 8–14.

As a result, many parents have begun becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of their kids on the platform.

In order to combat potential predatory actions by older individuals, Snapchat has made it significantly harder for individuals to find other users that are under the age of 17 without having any mutual friends.

Akin to LinkedIn, Snapchat decided that the easiest way to tackle potential negative behavior on the platform is to simply disable the ability to discover new individuals without having a common factor such as a mutual friend in the chain of friends.

While this is not perfect, Snapchat has stated that they already have begun seeing results.  There has been a significant drop off in account connections within the endangered age group as a result.

This move came at a good time as well.  As Snapchat continues to grow all around the world, and engagement levels continue to rise on the platform, more and more advertisers are beginning to see value in advertising on the platform.

While it is by no means an absolute fix, Snapchat has stated in a press release that they are constantly working on new mechanisms in order to protect a large portion of their underage userbase.

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