This Week: Hello from Singapore. I miss the SF fog already. 100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in writing this newsletter! The images? Now that’s another story.
Americans are NOT Happy With Social Media: That’s what Pew found when it asked about how the US sees social platforms and tech companies. Over 80% thinks the platforms censor political viewpoints, two thirds think social media has a negative impact on the country, but interestingly only half of Americans want more regulation.
Instagram Woos TikTok Creators: A Massive Instagram update aims to help smaller creators by changing the ranking algorithm, favoring the original over reposts, linking to the original creator in those reposts, and drop-kicking aggregators to the curb. They also recommended caping Reels at 90 seconds. These are just the first of many product changes coming from Meta and YouTube to incent TikTokers to switch.
This One Move is 80% More Likely to Kill Your Events: Amazon hosts a lot of conferences about AWS. I’m sure there’s an expert internal team building the conference plan, crafting sessions, and recruiting speakers. But now the big boss has an editorial edict: Up to 80% of your coverage must be about Generative AI ($). I’ve run a lot of media businesses, both as content lead and CEO, and this is absolutely the wrong way to manage creative content teams. Not only will these “edicts from on-high” devalue the in-conference content and disappoint attendees, but it will also push your conference organizers out the door. Suggesting a content quota is OK – and in this case your teams would probably have gotten close anyway – as AI is hot. But demanding? That’s the first step on the path of irrelevance – both for your conference and your core business.
CapCut Ban Could Kill Short Form? I’m a fan of Taylor Lorenz, but this paragraph from her story on the potential demise of CapCut is uninformed: “That, in turn, could lead to the collapse of the entire short form video ecosystem, say creators, users and experts. With short form video becoming the primary way young people express themselves online, a ban of CapCut would stifle self-expression for millions of young people, the experts and creators note.” <*sigh*> There are many alternatives to CapCut, and I guarantee that we’ll see a flood of new and updated vertical video editors launched in, oh, 258 days. YouTube already has YT Create – while not nearly as richly featured as CapCut, it’s a good start. Snap is probably doubling down on Story Studio, while the ultimate copyshop, Meta, must be on the case too. Short form videos existed before CapCut’s spring 2020 debut and will exist afterwards. Aside, I’ve been talking about the CapCut risk for almost two months, so beyond the irrational exuberance this is really nothing new.
How You Invite Users to Invest: Newsletter platform Beehiiv just announced a $33M raise from NEA and set aside $1M in the round for its users to participate – at the exact same valuation ($224M). THIS is how you do aligned venture for community startups. Contrast that with Substack, who enticed its users to invest at a previous valuation that had already been considered too rich by professionals. Venture is inherently risky, and neither Substack nor Beehiiv are likely to pay out much to investors. But at least with Beehiiv you get the same terms as the big guys. So far, it seems to be a success. I just tried to reserve $100, and they’re already oversubscribed by $755k. Plus, they had me at the email headline:
QUIBIS:
YOUTUBE
- Wondering why YouTube ad revenue is up so much? Reed Duscher breaks it down. I think TV revenue is also a big part here – I reported last year that Big Red was seeing $65+ on TV CPMs during the holidays.
- Related: 3 ways YouTubers can thrive in the new “All About Ads” era on Big Red.
- At Last! Final arguments this week in the Google anti-trust case. Here’s what might happen next.
- Related: OpenAI might launch a search engine this week.
- YouTube testing new AI tool to provide content inspiration for creators.
META
- Who needs content moderation? Meta plans to slash its oversight board.
- Instagram launches four new stickers for Stories.
- Whatsapp leans into helping people organize events – both big and small.
TIKTOK
- TikTok and UMG bury the hatchet. Olivia Rodrigo, Bad Bunny, Drake and others return.
- TikTok is trying to circumvent the 30% Apple tax by pushing users to its website to buy coins. Good for them. This saves fans money – or lets them buy more coins to gift to creators.
- Looks like Russia is leaning into propaganda on TikTok.
- US border patrol turns up the heat on TikTok employees coming to the US from China.
- Patreon weighs in on the TikTok ban.
- 20 marketers give their advice on how to navigate the post TikTok world.
- TikTok expands Pulse ad program to big events with “Pulse Premier”. The good news is that at least some creators get a 50% revshare.
- TikTok refuses to share how it protects kids in other countries outside the US.
- Bytedance reveals 61 internal corruption cases, including bribery, misuse of data and more – 4 employees arrested.
OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY
- Snap continues to advance the platform, adding new AR and VR tools for advertisers and enabling users to edit chats (finally!).
- Related: Snap also partners with Issa Rae’s Ensemble studio to bring more ad dollars to diverse creators.
- More from the Sprout research we talked about last week – as buying habits change, brands need to change too.
- Kajabi launches branded creator mobile apps on IOS and Android.
- So refreshing to see Amazon really lean in on partnering with creators in the gaming space. Well done!
- Congrats to pal (and ex-Jellysmack exec) @Hugo Amsellem for launching a new venture fund. Intuition is open for business!
- LinkedIn launches games, designed to compete with Wordle. Not sure this was the best use of their scarce development resources.
- Is LTK becoming a video platform? New update lets creators upload videos up to 10 minutes long.
- New research shows Twitch is becoming a news platform too. Oh, and Go Ducks.
- Kick’s hateful, awful problems just keep getting worse. Why does anyone use this platform?
CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE
- First music video made with Sora is out. It’s frenetic and a bit too repetitive, but that could be the fault of the storyteller, not the tool. The LA Times explores how it came together and what it means.
- You can now buy stuff at a virtual Walmart inside Roblox. I bought a cool pair of headphones selected by creator MD17_RBLX and got a “virtual twin” for my avatar too. No ability to link it to my Walmart account though. And the digital version looked better than the IRL product. I wonder if they’re hiring greeters?
- New product Noodle4 claims to use AI to mass review UGC content. Someone try it and tell me how it works.
- New VTuber bars are opening in Japan – looking forward to chatting about this in our Avatars and VTuber sessions at Creator World this week.
- From fail to win – how AI devices might succeed.
- AI filmmakers come together at Runway’s 2nd annual AI film festival.
RESEARCH
- Deloitte’s Q2 “State of GenAI in the Enterprise” report finds that top companies are scaling quickly, with improvements to existing products and innovation improvements as the top benefits. But it’s still relatively squishy, with the research showing adoption expanding but ROI seems elusive. The good news? Employment is not likely to drop due to AI – at least not soon.
- YouGov releases a report on TikTok’s current audience composition in the US. Presumably funded by TikTok.
- Roblox cherry-picks results from its internal study on ad effectiveness. I’d like to see the full survey – otherwise it’s hard to judge the seemingly positive results.
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I’ve built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies – including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.
