A month after saying that “AI has fundamentally transformed the tech industry” to explain why Patreon laid off 20% of its workforce, CEO Jack Conte now says the “current version of the web is a failed promise for creators and fandoms.”
His plan to fulfill that promise involves rolling out 30 new and revamped features for creators, many of which are focused on content promotion, discovery, and analysis.
Patreon has spent years as a sort of auxiliary platform for free-to-consume UGC hubs like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. It originally positioned itself as a place where creators could paywall extra content in the interest of both sustainable, off-platform income and community-building. It was a place where creators (and artists, and musicians, etc) could develop stronger bonds away from big tech sites.
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But the aforementioned big tech sites (especially YouTube) have built out on-platform membership/paywalling systems and added more fandom-oriented features of their own, and Discord has become the default place for communities to hang out and chat.
With this deluge of additions for creators, we get the vibe that Patreon is trying to establish itself as not just an auxiliary platform to YouTube et al., but an alternative platform.
“Social media has created mass polarization, addiction, and made it increasingly difficult to build a creative community and business. I refuse to believe that this is the best or only way that the internet can work for creators and fans,” Conte said in an announcement about the new/revamped tools. “I believe it can and should be better.”
So what exactly is Patreon planning to introduce?
Per TechCrunch, the list of updates includes:
- An iOS clipping feature (called, wait for it, Clips) that will turn creators’ paywalled videos into short, shareable clips. The resulting clips can be shared across social platforms to drive interest–a very popular strategy, one some creators are spending millions to chase–or can be shared as Patreon’s own short-form video format, “Quips.”
- Suggested video previews, which will “pull out the most engaging parts of […] paid videos,” writes TechCrunch
- Another feature that lets creators quote parts of their written posts and turn them into Quips
- A tweak to Patreon’s discovery algorithm. Its current system recommends creators similar to one a user already likes/subscribes to, but doesn’t prioritize creators with smaller followings.
- The tweaked version will, instead of comparing creators’ entire digital presences, compare their individual posts to one another, looking at characteristics like topic, craft, style, and theme. (For example, a user might enjoy TTRPG-flavored romance stories; the tweaked system would, ideally, see they liked a recent chapter uploaded by a creator, and offer them similar stories from other creators.) Patreon says this will help smaller creators be more frequently recommended.
- Niches, which lets creators join “dedicated, topic-based communities built around specific interests, subcultures, or fandoms,” per TechCrunch. These gathering places for creators will also serve as a pool for fans to find more of what they like.
- Support for live Q&As during creator livestreams
- Tools that let fans, for the first time, make their own public profiles within Patreon (again, giving us social platform vibe)
- More granular earnings, membership, and growth analytics. Creators will be able to see earnings by tier and billing cadence, as well as things like member count breakdowns that show who’s a trial member, who was gifted a membership, who is an active member, and who is in “retrying” status (where a monthly payment has bounced and Patreon is trying again to get the charge to go through)
Patreon also plans to take a page out of YouTube’s book and add recognition for creator milestones worth celebrating. It’s not yet clear what those milestones are or what the celebration would look like.
As TechCrunch reports, many of these features are still in testing; some are in early testing. Other concepts on the horizon for Patreon include anti-AI-scraping protection, real-time spam detection, expanded auto-mod, and more verification measures.
Patreon said that over the next few months, creators using its platform should expect to see many changes and updates.
We’ll be watching.
