The Endless Debate

Can’t we just stop the endless creators vs. old media debate?  

Hi, I’m Jim Louderback and this is my weekly creator economy newsletter. If you’ve received it, then you are either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

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This Week: More debate over creator crossover into MSM, super-insightful report on the state of create, and don’t sleep on these visual messaging / blogging apps!

MEETUP ALERT! So excited to do my third annual Inside the Creator Economy meetup in Lisbon at Web Summit! I’ll be gathering with friends from Influencers.Club at Catch Me Lisboa on Thursday November 14^th from 7:30 until 9:30 for drinks, a beautiful view over the bridges and harbor (and some of us will likely decamp to a local restaurant for dinner after). See you there!

Creators <> Hollywood s19 e666

Lots of bit-wagging this week about how creators can make or break traditional media. @Lia Haberman leaned into everything from Markiplier to The Great Gatsby to show how creators can lift up traditional media, while @Brett Dashevsky explored creators finding success in Hollywood and QYou’s high-value production process. However, it wasn’t all roses and unicorns. @Aden leaned into the apparent lack of success of three recent creator-first movies to question whether the pipeline is real. The conversation on the post is well worth reading. My take: we will see occasional success, but most successful creators won’t deliver Hollywood-style results – and that’s OK. It’s foolish to measuring creator-developed content via the yardstick of older media, both from a production and marketing perspective – much like using horsepower to measure a Tesla. Also, the full lifecycle value extraction of a creator-production will continue to deviate from traditional media economic models.

2025 Creator Economy Revealed

Community, AI and diversified revenue streams take center stage in this insightful look at 2025’s creator economy from ex-VC @Ollie Forsyth. As GenZ explodes into peak earning and influence, their lifestyle and work-choices will set the agenda – and bring big changes to the creator economy. Highlighted inside: creators can go global from day one, circumventing language and cultural barriers via AI, and big growth in expert newsletters – an area we are both building in. And even though Forsyth charts a marked slowdown in startup formation, he’s optimistic as more startups seem to be surviving. The report includes 180+ startups to watch, geographic hot spots, a look at the funding landscape and 8 top trends for 2025. Well worth a read – and a forward – to anyone trying to understand this weird hyper-growth market. Looking forward to having him on-stage at the Billion Followers Summit in Dubai this January too!

HERE COME THE VISUAL CHAT APPS

Two new visual chat / visual blogging apps are preparing to launch – and both have seen great results from TikTok teaser campaigns. First up – PackChat, the new venture from former Jungle Creations founder/CEO Jamie Bolding. It’s fun, visual and enables interactive storytelling between friends. Similarly, Daze is launching later this week, offering somewhat similar features and has been hyped not only on TikTok but in TechCrunch too (the a16z effect?). For more on visual blogging, check out this Daze love-letter from a Gen Alpha mom.

TREND SPOTTING IN INDIA:

Indian “culture collective” company Kommune (no, I don’t know what a culture collective is either) released a report outlining 5 key 2025 mega-trends in India. Along with a penchant for coming up with new words, the research surfaces trends also happening elsewhere, along with a few India-specific ones as well. But with almost 1.5 billion residents, even these trends are likely to spread. Ankur Mehra has a good summary, and this report is a must read for global creators and execs.

• Related: Hilarious MrBeast parody video featuring top Indian creators. 44M views in 3 days! The subtitles are great, but I’ll bet it’s even funnier if you speak Hindi. Plus, the Beast team played along with production help (and a cameo) in the US! (ht: Social Nation).
• Related: YouTube bringing its shopping affiliate program to India

SPONSOR: WHALAR

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QUIBIS

YOUTUBE

• Long-Shorts: Despite the slow roll-out, I am glad to know that Friday’s video – which clocked in at 2:54 – is now considered an official SHORT . But it’ll take some time to be recognized that way on my channel.
• Teach Your Children Well: YouTube launches a media literacy curriculum for kids. Ought to be required for every 6^th grader globally.
• Shingynomics: @Ed Zitron argues that the marginalization of Search Czar Prabhakar Raghavan signals the start of the Googapocalypse. Agree or disagree, he’s 100% right about Shingy.

META

• Tomorrow Never Knows: Instagram’s third annual “creators of tomorrow” provide insight into the content and formats Meta wants to lean into: Vibe Curators, Creator’s Inspo, IG Besties, DM Worthy Icons and AI Accelerators (predictable). In contrast, 2023’s list featured IG Besties (kaching), Raising the Bar, Unfiltered Creativity and On the Map.
• Jeepers Creepers: EMEA loves Meta Ray-Ban glasses, probably because they integrate so well with WhatsApp.
• Trust the Messenger: The Meta AI chatbot – prominently featured on Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger – will now include Reuters news. It supposedly launched Friday, but didn’t appear to work Saturday when I asked it for Iran/Isreal news – instead citing Wikipedia.
• You Look Mahvelous: Meta tests face recognition to combat scams and restore compromised accounts.
• Unraveling Threads: Meta shares 9 tips for creating engaging, discoverable content on Threads as part of a new educational push.

TIKTOK

• STEM 4 U: Looks like TikTok’s Stem feed has been a big success – content up nearly 20% – and now it’s broadly available.
• Molasses in January: Growth slows dramatically at TikTok and Bytedance as shop and AI investments take their toll. And apparently interns gone wild didn’t help either.
• Craptastic! TikTok wants to be your manufacturing partner – to make it easier to sell stuff on its shops.

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• A Beastly Beginning: Mr Beast, KSI and Logan Paul’s new kids lunch product Lunchly beset with mold problems.
• Related: New revelations in the MrBeast / Virtual Kitchens lawsuit ($) over MrBeast Burger. Non-paid recap here.
• Doom Building: Recap of how traditional media plans to survive the AI/Creator/Techpocalypse from last week’s Mipcom. Better late than never, I guess.
• Adios Click-Bait? LinkedIn’s Feed PM explains how it works, and promises we will all see less click-bait. Would love a deep dive with more detail, please.
• New News News: LinkedIn enhances its internal team of journalists by experimenting with a news banner.
• What’s the Frequency Kenneth: Interesting study on the middle majority and how news anchors and broadcasters talk to audiences – relevant for creators and podcasters too.
• Clueless in the Courtroom: Who gets the channel in a divorce?
• Who Let the Dogs Out: Jake Paul will open 25 sports bars.
• Tutorial: Sentiment analysis 101 from a top UK Social Media agency.
• Footsteps: Snap’s October product drop includes new lenses, bitmojis, Halloween fun and a fun way to relive your adventures.

CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE

• Digg It: Entertaining podcast with Digg and Revision3 co-founder Jay Adelson.
• Rocketship: Congrats to Ludwig for topping the Steam charts with his new Offbrand Game title Rivals of Aether 2!
• Birds of a Feather: New video posted on OpenAI’s YouTube channel combines IN-Q’s poetry with Sora-generated video. Worth a watch – and a comment scan – as this is state of the art today and the worst it will ever be. Not perfect, but emotionally satisfying.

RESEARCH

• Insert Surprised Face Here: New research reveals the top expressions from YouTube thumbnails. Interesting thumbnail genre breakdown as well. Any guess what was number one?

Inside “Dracula Daily”

By Morgan Ward

The “internet’s coolest book club” celebrates a book published in 1897 – Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Every day from May 3^rd through November 10^th, the “Dracula Daily” newsletter emails a chapter of the book (a diary entry on a newspaper clipping) from that day in the book. Fans share Harker’s journey in real time together as it unfolds. This has led to a resurging interest in the novel and helps readers discover the humor and innate tragedy in an entirely new way. Dracula Daily, produced by Matt Strickland, has been “running” annually since 2022. Fans old and new continue to share insights on Substack and Tumblr along with creating gothic artwork inspired by each day’s missive. By repackaging the public-domain text in a new format Strickland has activated new generations of fans who keep coming back year after year. Move over remakes – readjusting the mode of distribution offers another way to kick-start fandom with aging franchises.

Go Deeper:

• Subscribe to (or read the archive of ) Dracula Daily on Substack
• Read the profile of Matt Strickland and Dracula Daily in The New York Times
• Petrana Radulovic’s article for Polygon, includes a round-up of Tumblr’s best memes about the project.
• Read Stickland’s interview with Slate back in 2022 – when the project first began.
• Check out Unabridgedisbetter, tiffycat, and evydraws on Tumblr. They are high-profile fans within the fandom and post regular art/analysis about the project.
• Peruse the tag on Tumblr to see how other fans are engaging.
• Pick up Strickland’s book that includes his re-edited version of the novel along with fan commentary and artwork.

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).

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I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe to get this newsletter every Monday.