The race to win back talent on social media is now seriously heating up.

In April, Pinterest announced its new 'Creator Fund' initiative - an enormous cool sum of half a million dollars will be put in grants that would empower support from underrepresented communities.

Only in the US, the program was designed to be rolled out by Pinterest as the company recognized the need to "uplift Creators and communities that have been disproportionately underrepresented on the platform". And considering the pandemic was more visceral with minority communities, Pinterest saw a chance to lend, even in a level of help, in fueling the next stage of dedicated Pin creators get more unique content on the platform.

Now, Pinterest has unveiled the overview of results from the first round of the program while opening up applications for the next round of funding of the Creator Fund.
Thus, here's what Pinterest reports:

Across the first class, participating in the program gave creators a much-needed push. On average, they saw 2.9 times more Idea Pin impressions and 72% more monthly viewers than previous months. And, in total, they obtained more than 24,000 new followers.

With the first creators steeped in expert guidance and support, participants in Pinterest's Creator Fund have enjoyed major performance gains on the platform tied to the rollout of Pinterest's new Creator Code program aimed at promoting best practices for community engagement.

And now, Pinterest is opening the next round of its learning and investment effort.

Now you can apply for the second round of the Creator Fund until June 30-th. This one will run from August to September. And this time we hope to be able to find 10 more creators who need support in developing some new skillset while working their way further on Pinterest.

The company says specifically that in this next phase, it is eager to fund creators who belong to the BIPOC, disabled or LGBTQ+ community, as it seeks to maximize the inclusion and diversity through the program.

It is yet another platform move toward direct funding for creators, each one hoping to incentivize the process-and keep their stars from migrating elsewhere to some similar tool. With each of the current platforms copying each other, functional variance no longer marks a key difference in this competition for top talent, increasing - and without those platform stars, audiences will lose interest and migrate to other tools with their favorite web celebrities.

That is the reason why TikTok has its own 'Creator Fund',  facebook is adding more creator monetization tools, and why tweet subscription is under the horizon of Twitter's research, snapchat has an AR creator fund, etc.
Social platforms have always provided some level of funding and support for some creators, to some degree; but now, these programs are becoming much more accessible-because in order to preserve audience engagement, they need those top influencers to keep posting, and engaging their audiences in their apps.

Pinterest is taking a slightly more targeting approach in its rollout, focusing on funding minority groups, but the impetus is still the same, and it'll be interesting to see, as all of these similar tools evolve on each network, which, eventually, wins out and whether that's a determining factor in their long-term viability.

Absolutely, competition for eCommerce creators is increasing for Pinterest, which is also why it's added Idea Pins (its take on Stories) and other creative tools to offer more ways for users to engage their audiences in the app.

In any case, its Creator Fund is a great move, but overall creator funding is another key trend to keep tabs on going forward.