Creators matter.
There may be 50 million creators across YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and other social media platforms, but 97% of them aren’t getting paid for their contributions, Cinnamon founder and CEO Róbert Tarabčák says.
That’s one reason he’s created an alternative way to get video creators paid. And it doesn’t involve ads or begging on Patreon.
Creators aren't getting paid for what they're making. Or ... at least not nearly as much as they ... [+]
“Cinnamon is a multi-level engagement video platform that is empowering creators with a bunch of quite unique tools to get paid fairly and instantly,” Tarabčák told me on a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. “They can’t make a living out of it so that’s why there is a huge increase of platforms like Patreon, and Tip Jar, and Buy Me a Coffee. And we are next to the mix with a different business model, different approach, with a focus on empowering creators with these tools, and also to empower their viewers to pay them directly.”
Cinnamon, which just landed a $2.5 million seed round from micropayments pioneer Coil, plans to pay creators in a very seamless and effortless way. Start watching a video on the service, and your browser kicks of a stream of micropayments that flows instantly into the creator’s wallet. Stop watching, and and the stream halts.
Of course, there is a catch.
You — and the creator — need to be signed up to Coil’s micropayments system, which works with both standard state-issue currencies and cryptocurrencies. Basically, you sign up to Coil for $5/month, and it distributes payments to all the content creators whose work you patronize.
It’s tempting to portray every new startup in a space as disrupting existing winners — in this case YouTube — and it’s true that the model is disruptive. But Tarabčák views Cinnamon as an “and,” not an “or.”
Listen to the interview behind this story on the TechFirst podcast:
And it’s an or designed for your most fanatical fans.
“We are a complementary platform,” he says. “We don’t want anyone to shift their entire work over to Cinnamon today, or trying to move all of their audience to Cinnamon. You can use Cinnamon today as a tool that will just increase the overall impressions of your content across all social media. So you can collaborate with our current community, or you can bring your super fans, just 1% of your followers to Cinnamon and work together in order to maximize the potential of your content.”
Part of the appeal is an attempt to blur the line between creators and consumers in a strategy that reminds me of Apple’s famous “rip, mix, burn” ads for early versions of iTunes.
Publish to Cinnamon.video, and anyone can create their own “Shorts,” representations of your content in quick 15-second-long clips. They can then share their Shorts with others, becoming in effect mini-creators. People who like the Shorts can click through to watch the entire original piece of content.
It’s consumable, explorable, shareable. In some ways, the concept is similar to Twitch’s clips.
Tarabčák’s first-year goal is ambitious: 100,000 creators who are monetizing via Cinnamon’s platform. And he sees his goal as fundamentally changing how creators need to approach their craft.
“Most importantly, we’re removing the need to sell yourself out to companies, sponsors, and other stakeholders, ensuring your content is authentic, and that you become known for your message, not your product placements,” he says.
That’s also ambitious.
If he succeeds, there’ll be more places for 50 million or even 100 million creators to invent, create, build, share ... and also, hopefully make a living.
