This week, the glaring gap in YouTube’s global strategy, dig into MrBeast’s high-stakes Saudi adventure, and explore the latest podcasting power plays. Plus, insights on the evolving world of search and a big win for creators and capital. Dive in for the details.
This Week : An AI pug went viral, foreshadowing the future of online video. I lay out a path forward and profile a potential solution - for at least some creators. Two industry titans debuted new metrics hoping to snare brands and buyers. Plus, two fascinating research studies, one focused on beauty and the other on LinkedIn creators and much, much more!
Formerly Open Tech Companies Now Tightly Control Access to the Latest Breakthrough Media Technologies AI generated via Google's NotebookLM This newsletter from Jim Louderback, a creator economy expert, covers the week’s biggest developments in the world of online content creation. The newsletter explores the growing influence of AI video generators and how they are being adopted by companies like Meta and YouTube. It also looks at the rising popularity of niche fandoms, particularly on platforms...
Shaken Not Stirred Coinkydink or Not? All of Facebook's properties go down due to networking "configuration changes". Then TikTok goes out for a few hours. Shortly after, a massive Twitch hack due to a "server configuration change" releases just about everything of note from the streamer including source code, earnings for top streamers and much more. To quote Bond super-villian Goldfinger, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time its enemy action." Wheel of Snapchat! It start...
Linkedin Pays Creators - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedins-latest-investment-creators-andrei-santalo/ LatAm Creator Economy is super strong but needs more monetization - https://future.a16z.com/latin-america-creator-economy/ The Future of Social Tokens and the creator economy - https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/social-tokens-and-creator-centric Good News from the Pandemic - https://digiday.com/media/football-has-lost-its-soul-how-copa90-is-repositioning-itself-around-the-creator-econom...
Podcaster Shaan Puri is launching an experimental 1 of 1 NFT/// This is an experimental 1 of 1 NFT. This token gives the holder the right to 5 minutes of airtime on the My First Million Podcast. THE FACEBOOK FILES - Wall Street Journal Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, includ...
The CryptoPunks are going Hollywood. - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/uta-cryptopunks-nft-film-tv-vieo-games-1235005392/ The red-hot NFT crypto-art project from Larva Labs has signed with United Talent Agency for representation across film, TV, video games, publishing, and licensing. UTA will also represent Meebits and Autoglyphs, two other crypto-art projects created by Larva Labs. The Power of Protest - Can Twitch Streamers Taking a day of make a difference? - TIKTOK is NOT...
YouTube Killing Off the Thumbnail: If you’re a YouTuber, you’ve likely stressed over the perfect thumbnail for your video. Consultants, A/B testing tools, and even sessions at VidCon have helped countless creators optimize for clickability. But it looks like the thumbnail is being upstaged –– at least in search –– by auto-generated chapters and time-stamped images. Sounds good for users, but somewhere Jeremy Vest is tearing his hair out. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri visits Bloomberg Technology...
As creator economy startups multiply like rabbits, the bigger platforms are getting into the game by upping their product chops. First up, LinkedIn. I love distributing this newsletter there, but their creator-first products are lame. Clearly LinkedIn knows that as well, since it just bought tutorial video app Jumprope and plans to convert CEO Jake Poses into the head of creator product, with CTO Travis Johnson running core engineering. Also Discord just snapped up one of my favorite writers, De...
Facebook will spend a lot on VR and AR - https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/07/28/facebook-metaverse/?sh=4851ce1318bc Livestreaming takes off - is it QVC all over again - Livestream shopping on social media shows potential in the US — Quartz (qz.com) Identity and anonymity - good or bad? - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/style/anonymity-pseudonymity-online-identity.html NEWS HITS: TikTok becoming LinkedIn, Twitter Vocal Effects, Pinterst leaning into Creators and Welcome “Señor Best...
Is Instagram Censoring us? - https://www.instagram.com/p/CRrajNYlL3f/?utm_medium=copy_link One YouTube subscriber = 25 TikTok subscribers according to new financial services firm YouTube releases Tip Jar - or did they update one from 7 years ago? YouTube Intros Super Thanks, Tip-Jar Feature for Creator Channels - Variety Facebook is finally a media company - https://www.theverge.com/21273768/section-230-explained-internet-speech-law-definition-guide-free-moderation https://techcrunch.com/2021/07...
Why Can’t Other Platforms Pay Creators Like YouTube? VidCon founder Hank Green’s latest rant on TikTok shows – yet again – that YouTube dominates in compensating creators. In 2020 Big Red paid out about 50% of its $19 Billion in revenue to creators. Hank also notes that even though TikTok trumpets its billion-dollar creator largesse, that’s only 7% of Double T’s estimated 2020 revenue. Using Niel Robertson’s round-up of creator grants, the other platforms are also far behind. Snap’s $365M payout...
TIKTOK's NEW JUMP FEATURE Rebuilds the Internet Inside TikTok: Now developers can connect third party tools like messaging apps, shopping, cooking, news sites (and others) directly into TikTok. This means you could watch a video, Whatsapp your friends about it, share it on Discord, book a trip to where the video was produced, view the recipe behind the video, and then buy the ingredients all without leaving TikTok. It’s the beginning of an incredible vision for the social video app, one where yo...
MATH IS HARD: Today, we live in a world where 24.3% of Instagram’s 1 billion monthly active users have over 100,000 followers, and close to 5 million accounts have over 1 million followers." OK, think about it. Do you really believe that a quarter of all instagrammers have 100k or more followers? A little math would show that with a billion MAUs, that would mean every user would have to follow, ON AVERAGE 29,300 creators. That's patently absurd. If you follow the link you see that the data comes...
This Week: Bickering Beekeepers and Marky Mark Trail, Hashtags Are Cool Again, BYOC, Politics on TikTok, Instagram Giveaways, CJ So Cool! Details and Links: Life Imitates Art Imitating Life: A few months ago, I pointed you to the wholesome TikTok beekeeper @TexasBeeWorks . But she’s now embroiled in a beekeeper battle with @lahoneybeerescue who calls her Texas nemesis foul, fake and dangerous . This would be just another creator vs. creator smackdown, except the whole thing was foreshadowed by 6...
This week Cassie and Jim discuss whether Facebook and Instagram dropped the ball on dropping Likes, a look at whether TikTok really is focused on promoting blandness (and hit singles) and we handicap the latest darling app Poparazzi.
Google's Cutting Edge Telepresence Twitch Adds New Hashtags.. FINALLY ! New startup FAVE Empowers Superfans WILDFANG comes to Nordys Gucci comes to Roblox Twitter, Zoom, Discord, Spotify and Facebook are selling tickets to events Poised will make you better at Zoom Lovingly recorded on FiresideChat...
YouTube Launches Shorts Fund: Big Red is ramping up the “compete with TikTok” game with a $100M fund for creators . Payouts will be determined by engagement and views, rather than ad revenue – and you don’t even need to be an official “partner” to win! But it’ll take a lot more than cash to dethrone Big T. Cassie and Jim unpack that news, while also exploring how Apple is both a positive and a negative for the creator economy, details on new stuff from Koji, and what it takes to REALLY be an ent...
The Epic Web3 Transition Changes Everything: If you read just one thing this week, make it Rex Woodbury's piece on Web3 , creators and the metaverse. We're in the middle of a transition from Web 2.0, ruled by platforms and middlemen to Web3 - which is about direct creator to community transactions. Rex describes Web3 perfectly, but also ties so many other threads together. If you read this, you know something big is going on. This post ties it all together with a bow. Maximizing Brand Deal Value...
Stories this week and more! Plus a tip of the week from Derral Eves Super League Disaster is Another Win For Community-First Media: If you’re not a (European) football fan, you may have missed the latest scandal roiling the sport world . Rich and absent owners attempted to co-opt the community tradition of “football clubs” associated with cities and towns around Europe. This decidedly fan-unfriendly approach was roundly and soundly destroyed by fans everywhere. The hide-bound sport world has bee...
