In the recent years, the rise of online influencers has grown dramatically. With the start of Youtube in 2005, it came the beginning of the start of online influencing and the creation of the job. As Youtube's popularity grew, so did creators on the website. People like Smosh (Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox), Ryan Higa, Michelle Phan, and many others quit their day jobs to make their money only from Youtube. Once people realized that this was a possibility there began a wave of influencers, not only on Youtube, but on other platforms like MySpace. After these influencers gained social media and online fame, they also began to gain fortune. These people would buy expensive cars, expensive homes, and expensive clothes. This fact drew people in, seeing that they started out as regular people, just like themselves, but now thanks to commissions from Youtube, sponserships from companies, and other financial offers, these people were self-made millionares.
As time went by, more websites began to offer money and fame in exchange for content. This went from Facebook to Instagram to the latest one, Tik Tok. These influencers have grown to have bigger audiences than ever. For example, Charli D'amelio is one of the biggest names on Tik Tok with almost 100 million followers on that app alone. She has gone on to be in commercials, have interviews and photoshoots with magazines, and even have her own drink at Dunkin Donuts named the Charli. This all came from her talent as a Tik Tok dancer along with her positive attitude and promotion of equality for all types of people.
However, social medias do not always find ways to keep these online influencers. Vine was one of the biggest social media platforms of its time, with over 200 million active users. Many influencers came from vine like David Dobrik, Cody Ko, Logan and Jake Paul. All of these influencers found that since Vine did not offer any sort of payment from the company to the influencers, the app wasn't worth spending hours on content. Many of the big influencers left the site for Instagram or Youtube months before Vine was officially shut down in 2016. Vine was bought by Twitter after they had lost so much money from losing their biggest influencers. Tik Tok almost went down the same route, however, in 2020, they created the Tik Tok creators fund, which allowed them to pay their influencers.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-shutdown
https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-youtube-in-photos-2015-10
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