TikTok CEO Shou Zhi Chu. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
TikTok plans to tell creators on its platform that it is discontinuing the Creator Fund, a $2 billion initiative in which the ByteDance-owned company pays viral stars. The service will announce later today that it will phase out the three-year fund on December 16 in the US, UK, France and Germany.
The Creators Fund has been controversial among creators and regulators since its creation, as it rarely pays creators meaningfully. According to the report, the data of content creators within the program was also stored on servers in China. forbesThis goes against the company's previous promise to keep all US user data in the US.
“Our ultimate goal is to create the best possible experience on TikTok and provide creators with a robust ecosystem of monetization services,” a TikTok representative said. luck Today, we would like to inform you via email about the termination of the Creator Fund. “As part of our continued efforts and commitment to delivery, we are required to evolve our products and apply resources elsewhere to best support creators and explore new services. I am.”
The creators have previously said: luck They say they received “tiny” payments from the Creators Fund for TikTok videos that received hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of views a month. For a creator to be eligible for this fund, he needed to have at least 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 video views in the past 30 days.
Earlier this year, TikTok launched another program called the Creativity Program that rewards creators for viral content, offering creators with similar reach a financial bonus for viral videos longer than 60 seconds. We encourage users to publish long-form videos with accompanying tags.Program members spoke luck In July, they announced they were making “thousands of dollars” each month with the program.
This follows last winter's introduction of the Pulse ad revenue sharing program, which pays creators less than $5 for millions of views, similar to the Creator Fund. luck. It appears that TikTok may have quietly discontinued the program, as there is no mention of revenue sharing in the Pulse section of TikTok's Business Help Center. (TikTok representatives did not respond in time) luckQueries about program status and where Creativity Fund member data is stored. )
With the end of the Creator Fund, members can now transition to the Creativity Program by changing their app's auto-approval settings.
However, long films are still the mainstream. Creators cannot receive compensation from the Creativity Fund for videos that are shorter than 60 seconds. This may be a ploy to extort more advertising dollars to encourage higher quality content and more engaged viewers.
It remains to be seen whether creators who transition into the Creativity Program will receive a very small payout (as was the case with the Creators Fund) or whether they will receive the windfall benefits they experienced earlier in the program.
