Americans, in case you haven’t heard, are obsessed with short-form videos. The average TikTok user in the U.S. spends 97 minutes per day on the platform. YouTube users, meanwhile, spend a little under 90 minutes on the video sharing site; Instagram users dedicate over 30 minutes a day to scrolling the Meta-owned network.

Despite all that success, a significant percentage of the people who help make platforms’ most popular videos remain firmly hidden in the background (for example, video editors). A new effort by the Creators Guild of America (CGA), a non-profit professional service organization, however, could make their names a little more well known and further legitimize their contributions to the world of short-form video.

The CGA, which formed in 2023 to focus on the rights of digital content creators, has launched an accreditation service to let digital creators register and verify their work. As part of that effort, a comprehensive record of people’s credits on the projects will go online in a compendium called Mosaic, which is currently in beta. Think of it as an IMDb for content creators.

“Historically, [short-form] content was utilized merely for fun or as entertainment or a joke,” Daniel Abas, founder and president of Creators Guild, tells Fast Company. “The accreditation service was born with the intention of recognizing the contributions of digital creators, both in front of the camera and behind it, because this is turning into a serious profession.”

There are some requirements creators must meet in order to receive accreditation. A platform, brand, agency or subscriber base, must have paid for the work. In addition, the work must be distributed on a platform recognized by the CGA—an extensive list that includes all the major social media platforms, app stores and more. Creators must also have 10,000 or more combined impressions, downloads or registered users and, naturally, must be free of copyright infringement.

Applicants can select up to three roles in the creation process (i.e. gamer, editor, photographer) that apply to their duties. Following a peer-to-peer review of that application, the CGA then verifies the request. That process, at present, takes a couple of days.

The peer review process, where other members of the creator world confirm the applicant’s credentials is essential not only to ensure accuracy, but to prevent the process from becoming hopelessly backlogged, says Abas.

“In the creator economy, this is not 8,000 producers or 150,000 actors,” he says. “We’re thinking in terms of millions of members. In order for this to scale, this has to be peer to peer.”

The accreditation process is for a wide assortment of people who work on these videos. The program currently recognizes eight roles in the creation process – Creator, Influencer, Gamer, Podcaster, Entertainer, Writer, Brand, Community, Videographer, Photographer, Editor, Designer, Founder, Co-Founder, Producer, Developer—with additional recognized roles planned. That accreditation will provide a formal recognition of their work, which they can then leverage for other gigs, or even potentially jobs in traditional media, such as film or television. 

“Content is a form of entrepreneurship,” says Abas. “We hope this is the beginning of the necessary infrastructure for this wild wild west.”