Photo Credit: Patreon
Patreon announces 30 new features coming to the platform, designed to address the “failure” of the current internet for creators and fans alike. The news follows mass layoffs at the company last month.
Today, Patreon CEO Jack Conte announced nearly 30 new features coming to the platform, focused on “long-term relationships over short-term attention, paying creators fairly for their work, and investing in human creativity.”
The company unveiled a roadmap that “reflects (Patreon’s) philosophy that the current internet is failing creators and fans, prioritizing attention and fleeting engagement over genuine community and successful creative businesses.”
“The current version of the web is a failed promise for creators and fandoms. As creators, we can’t even reach our followers on the platforms anymore,” said Conte. “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. I believe it can and should be better.”
However, the company appears to have recognized the role short-form video platforms play in helping creators find their audience cannot be overstated.
To that end, Patreon is changing the way creators get discovered, with a revamped recommendations system focused around giving smaller creators more visibility. The platform is adding short-form video clips, topic-based communities, insights, and much more.
On the short-form front, Patreon is launching an iOS feature, Clips, which will turn creators’ videos into bite-sized, shareable clips. These can be downloaded and shared on other platforms, like TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, but they can also be posted as Patreon’s own short-form video format, called Quips.
Other new creator tools still in early testing include suggested video previews and the ability for creators to quote snippets from their longer text posts into Quips. Support for live Q&As on creator livestreams and tools that let fans make their own profiles are also on the way.
The platform’s recommendation algorithm previously focused on finding creators similar to those the user already followed, but it often favored creators with an existing and larger fanbase. Discovery will now focus on comparing a particular post to other posts by topic, style, theme, and other factors. The new feature is designed to help highlight smaller creators, Patreon explained.
A new communities feature called “Niches” will enable creators to participate in dedicated, topic-based communities built around specific fandoms and interests. The goal here is clearly to help fans discover more of the things they like without having to search far and wide to find all the different creators on Patreon that focus on the same topic.
On the monetization front, Patreon is rolling out tools to help creators track their audience and earnings while launching more granular earnings, membership, and growth analytics. An earnings tab will break down earnings by tier and billing cadence, while membership insights will provide info like member counts that show free trials and different tiers, with filters to make it easier to sift through that information.
Patreon says in the long term, the company plans to develop security features such as anti-AI scraping tools, real-time spam detection, better auto-moderation, more verification measures, and more.
The news follows Patreon laying off nearly 100 employees, or 20% of its workforce, back in July. The move was announced in response to broader market shifts and the need to “flatten” organizational structure. However, the company maintains that its “core business” remains robust.