Snap has begun an early roll-out of replies to Spotlight clips, providing another means of engagement with its TikTok-like short-form video feed.
The service is empowering users to reply directly to a Spotlight video, and these are displayed on the clip, provided that the creator approves them.

This will be an important pivot for Snapchat, which focuses on more private and intimate connections-though users will have complete control over whether to display comments, or not.

Axios reveals:

As is also the case with the replies feature in its Stories product, creator replies will only go public if they wish to have them do so. The creator will have control over which of the replies are public and can accept or reject comments in bulk to make public.

According to Axios, commenting has been the most asked-for update to Spotlight, which, like all short-form video options, experienced a huge spike in user interest lately.

As Snap refreshed its Q1 22 performance report, total time spent on Spotlight grew 230% year-over-year and it also saw a 3.5x increase in the number of submissions to Spotlight using AR Lenses or Creative Tools.

That could, of course, be a point of differentiation for Snap: after all, Spotlight is simply a TikTok clone, but Snap's AR tools regularly go viral, and the app's nous for next-level features is still well ahead of the pack.

If that keeps more users on Snap because of it, then that's a huge win; adding more engagement features, such as comments, could be another big step in the feature's development.

But it'll be pretty scarce to begin with. Snapchat will start testing Spotlight replies with users in New Zealand from this week, before deciding any further rollout. We'll keep you posted on any developments