Social Native Expands Creator Economy Stake With Influence.co Acquisition

Global content marketplace Social Native has acquired the creator assets of professional “influencers” network Influence.co, a move that will boost Social Network’s expansion across the creator marketplace, per a Tuesday (Feb. 15) press release.

“We are committed to empowering human creativity across the globe,” David Shadpour, founder and CEO of Social Native, said in the announcement. “This acquisition further strengthens our stronghold on activating large volumes of diverse creators.

“As more and more brands embrace the creator economy, our investment in data and machine learning ensures brands are able to scale diverse content required to stay relevant in 2022 and beyond,” he said.

The creator economy has an estimated market size of $104 billion, with consumers who are influenced by content shared by their peers across social media and other digital platforms leading that sector’s expansion.

“We are proud to serve brands and creators alike in our mission to empower the creator economy. Creator content is naturally diverse, relatable, cost-effective and scalable,” Shadpour said. “The creator economy is the natural path to sourcing high volumes of branded content.”

In 2020, Social Native acquired Olapic, a user-generated content enterprise solution for eCommerce retailers. The company has also made several executive hires and more than doubled the size of its product and engineering teams.

Related: Snap, Pinterest Focus on Video, AR as Social Platform Competition Heats Up

Meanwhile, video continues to be the medium of choice for content creators and social media users, if recent earnings reports are to be believed as the measuring stick for what’s to come in addition to telling the story of what’s already happened.

Meta’s lackluster performance was quickly forgotten when Snap surprised many investors by posting its first quarter of positive net income since it went public in 2017.

That was led by a 20% increase in daily active users (DAUs), which rose 20% year over year to 319 million, an increase of 54 million, in the fourth quarter of 2021. Augmented reality (AR) video was behind that growth as Snap expanded these capabilities with its Snap AR self-service Lens Web Builder tool for content creators and brands with virtual try-ons and video-based methods of engagement.