NYC and Florida brand Social Media Toxic as CEOs Head to DC to Testify

Florida House Votes to Ban Social Media: Well, just for kids under 16. The legislative body zeroed in on the addictive nature of the platform. This was one of my top trends for 2024, and this is just the beginning. The bill still needs to pass the senate and then get signed by the governor, which seems likely. It will still be challenged in court by the platforms but focusing on the addictive nature of the platforms – rather than the content – might suffice where others failed.

• Related: CEOs of Twitter, Discord, Snap, TikTok and Meta testify at the US Senate on Wednesday about child safety – or the lack thereof – on their platforms. I’d love to be a fly in the wall in *that* green room. Follow that link for live video.
• Related: New York City mayor calls social media a health hazard.
• Related: Global research on app usage for kids 4-18 reveals the rise of “The AI Generation”. It’s from Qustodio, who makes parental control and monitoring apps for families, so there’s a lot of data on why you should buy their products. But once you get past that there are additional fascinating insights, including how 20% of kids used OpenAI last year, that half of the kids they surveyed use Roblox and that YouTube and YouTube kids continue to dominate the video world in preference – but not time spent. TikTok takes the time spent crown with nearly two hours a day on average usage for video – but Roblox surpasses that by nearly 20 minutes a day. And I’m fascinated by how much Twitter has grown among kids, given how much of a cesspool it’s become (see below).

Mr Beast Goes to Twitter: The numbers are in. Mr Beast just windowed a 4-month-old video onto Twitter as a test. The video had 217M views as of Friday on YouTube. It delivered 156M ”impressions” on Twitter, and most importantly $263K in revenue. Even Mr. Beast called it a bit of a façade, as advertisers piled into the action – raising the revenue. X appeared to be boosting the video as an ad unit too – many users reported seeing it more than once. And since the impression count increments each time a video is viewed for 2 seconds, multiple individual exposures lead to multiple impressions per unique viewer. YouTube only increments the view counter after 30 seconds. The numbers are funny. But the strategy is legit. Windowing four-month-old content to different platforms is absolutely viable– if your sponsors are viewed as well. We’ll likely never know the effectiveness of those video views, but it’s certainly worth more testing.

• Related: Check My Ads filed a complaint to the FTC about the misleading ad wrapper around the video – and the lack of disclosure. All ads should be labelled as such – not as big of a deal with a Beast stampede, but for more reprehensible or misleading content it certainly is.
• Related: Mr. Beast is close to closing a $100M deal with Prime Video. Fascinating that Amazon was the one to bite here – Disco, Paramount, Disney, Peacock, Netflix and Apple all *could* have made hay here. But Beast is coming soon to a TV streamer near you.
• Related: Mr Beast goes to China too – welcome to Bilibili – this teaser video has over 8 million views and is number one on the site.

Swifties vs. the Sickos: Fandom to the rescue! When Ai-generated explicit deepfake Taylor Swift content flooded X, there was much handwringing that somebody ought to do something. Well someone did – but it wasn’t X. It wasn’t the government. It was the army of Taylor Swift fans. Through SEO spiking, doxing and other techniques, those awful images and videos are now nearly impossible to find. The world is now waking up to the power of fandom, and how when unleashed it’s hard to control – let alone slow down. Perhaps this vigilante justice will spur our legal machinery to act over deepfakes and sextortion. Perhaps it will reign in the pornographic hellhole that was once Twitter. We can only hope.

• Related: YouTube cleaning up its own Celebrity AI Garbage problem.
• Related: Sag Aftra calls for new laws banning AI likeness theft.
• Related: George Carlin’s estate sues producer of hour-long comedy special for ripping off his voice and humor style.

How Creators Can Survive Without Support: I expanded on last week’s newsletter about the YouTube layoffs with a look at communities for creators – and other resources. My conclusion: Creators need to tithe 10% to communities and tools to help them connect and grow – and they are really, truly on their own.

• Related: VidIQ buys Creator Now, a learning hub founded by Eric Decker – part of the consolidation of the YouTube support market.

Who Won the GenZ Brand Wars in 2023? This very personalized report from two experts in the field tries to answer that. Inside you’ll find 10 breezy analyses of the big winners and emerging brands to monitor this year as well. There’s a lot of data out there you can parse through – but sometimes you just need experts to give you their gut.

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QUIBIS:

YOUTUBE

• New research creates a random sampled model of YouTube and uncovers fascinating insight about the platform, including:
  • There are 14 billion videos on YouTube, which makes it a foundational infrastructure of the internet.
  • Video uploads have grown dramatically since 2020, with fully more than 2.5 billion uploaded in 2022 and an estimated 4 billion in 2023. The ballooning storage costs must be epic.
  • Slightly more than 3.5% of YouTube’s videos have more than 10k views, yet they make up 94% of all viewership.
  • The 1% of videos with more than 100 comments accounts for 55% of all comments
  • Likes are even more skewed with a most accruing to well under a tenth of a percent of all videos
  • Views and comments are somewhat correlated (making it a good proxy to identify fake views), yet views and subscribers are hardly correlated at all.
  • Just over 40% of videos are music only, 15% were mostly still images, 20% were video gameplay, 4% religious and 3% news.
  • There’s much more including data on video length distribution, those from live streams, category and tag distribution, advertising call-outs and language.

• YouTube’s “Between Two Creators” series returns with The Merrell Twins and Alan Chikin Chow.
• New feature being tested that lets users “like” Super Chat messages in a live stream/premiere

META

• Instagram piloting a new private side to the app where you can post just to close friends.
• New stricter settings for messages on Instagram and TikTok for teens – like shutting the barn door after the cows have escaped.

TIKTOK

• TikTok testing 30-minute uploads.
• Any cultural phenomenon can now be viewed through the TikTok lens with predictable results. In this case, it appears, TikTok has saved Hollywood since it launched 5 years ago. I’m sure Paramount (-72%), Warner Bros. (-57%), Disney (-14%) and Cinemark (-64%) would agree 100%.
• TikTok begins auto-scroll rollout. Here’s why you should just say no – hint, it’s better for creators. Also, it’s still just a test, according to Lia Haberman.
• TikTok shop on a $4B annual run-rate. But will it stick?
• TikTok lays off 50 people in sales and advertising.
• Bytedance research team releases model to use AI to divine depth from flat images. The demo is cool.

BRAND AND MARKETING

• Duolingo’s Zaria Parvez on why social media execs are the best marketing leaders.
• 5 influencer trends from Sprout Social’s data highlight the power of smaller creators and the rise of NIL.
• Influencer marketing agency MAVRK rebrands to Later – the trends driving the change in the CEO @Lyle Steven’s post are worth reading. Feels like a return, in some ways, to MCNs.
• BeReal embraces advertisers. Too little too late?
• Round-up of how marketers can maximize social media in 2024.
• Building the “beauty products for tweens” market.

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• Round-up of how creators can make money on social media in 2024.
• Twitch fighting an uphill battle as it tries to embrace non-endemic advertisers.
• So much fun seeing four top YouTube animators live last week!
• Aibo reborn, as Snapchat adds a generative AI pets feature for subscribers.
• Twitch changes how it pays streamers – notably removing the cap on 70/30 earnings.
• Interesting reflections on the slow-motion mediapocalypse we’ve been living through over the past 25 years.
• Roblox launches new Creator Store, designed to help accelerate creator commerce on platform.
• Everyone’s now waking up to the reality that social video is top of funnel for owned properties, not a primary path to riches.
• Musicians could be next to strike.
• Onlyfans has an awareness problem. So it sent a handful of its stars fishing.
• Poking fun at LinkedIn while its growth accelerates.
• Vince McMahon out at WWE – and Logan Paul is in full-time.

GENERATIVE AI and TECH

• A cool breakthrough in how to walk in immersive environments without running into a wall. From Disney!
• Cue the cute animals! Google testing its own AI video generator.
• 10 insightful looks at the state of AI, from Foundation’s OG VC Ashu Garg. My favorites – middleware is coming and treat LLMs as “reasoning engines”, not fact bases (similar to how I call them “possibility engines”).
• Old friend Ben Parr releases an exhasutive presentation on the state of AI investing – free download!
• Voice cloning startup ElevenLabs raises $80M to better clone your voice to help you make better content.
• Discord kills Gas – @brendan Gahan reflects on lessons from the founder.
• Related: Li Jin thinks apps should be more like videos – with a similar boom-bust life-cycle. Oh, and I’m the one that posted the quantum computing expose.

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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.

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