Inside the Creator Economy with Cassie Roma and Jim Louderback
By James Louderback
Inside the Creator Economy with Cassie Roma and Jim LouderbackOct 18, 2021
How James Bond Helped me Make Sense of the Facebook (and Twitch and TikTok) "problems"
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 started out so well – Snapchat spent a million dollars a day to get creators to post short videos on Spotlight. But it didn’t last long. Now instead of paying creators outright it plans to enter them into a raffle instead. In other words, if you make great Snap Spotlight content, you earn the right to maybe, possibly, perhaps win a few bucks. Imagine if I tried that at VidCon. “Hey team, love all the great work you’re doing! You’ll all be entered into my ‘VidCon Challenge’, where one lucky employee actually gets paid each week”. That won’t fly here – and likely won’t incent creators either. Even if they could get Vanna White to hand out the prizes.
So much for IGTV.
Rewind is Dead too.
Facebook encourages hate speech for profit, says whistleblower: The whistleblower behind the leak of an enormous cache of Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, Frances Haugen, went public on 60 Minutes on Sunday, revealing more of the inner workings the most powerful social media platform in the world. Revealing her identity on national television, Haugen described a company so committed to product optimization that it embraced algorithms that amplify hate speech.
BOOK TOK!
LinkedIn Pays Creators… sort of - The LatAm Creator Economy - Social Tokens
Episode 16 - The Facebook Files, NFTs for sponsorships, The Kids Are Not Alright
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, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management.
Disturbing Portrait of TikTok Celebrity: The reality TV show starring Charli D’Amelio and family dropped a week ago, and it paints a disturbing portrait of how fame twists and assaults vulnerable teens.
Crypto Punks Go Hollywood
A Mercenary, a Barbarian and a Thumbnail walk into a Room….
Creator Products Take Center Stage at Discord, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube
Episode 12 - Streaming and VRing all day and all night!
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 Bestia”!
Episode 11 - Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and more
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/2021/07/20/facebook-onboards-another-31-newsletter-writers-on-bulletin/
Is music a bad place to try to make money?
NFTs FTW
Episode 10 - Paying Creators and why YouTube Still Leads by a "Country Mile"
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 is 18% of its 2B in 2020 revenue – much better but still not YouTube level. Pinterest is nowhere, with 1+% of 2020 revenue. LinkedIn, as usual, remains a big fat 0%. These figures – more than anything else – are exactly why creators are moving from platforms to Web3-style owned connections with their communities. They are tired of giving away their milk for free.
Now Facebook says they will give away a BILLION DOLLARS - over 18 months, that's 2/3rds of a percentage of the $150B they will make in that time frame...
The future of online retail looks a lot like QVC, with live streams of influencers, including dogs, doing the hawking
Retailers as varied as Walmart, Amazon, Gucci and Levi’s are experimenting with live-stream shopping events, which are projected to generate $11 billion in U.S. sales this year
PLUS:
Cheap legal advice for creators What is a "Creator" Alas Fleets, we hardly knew yeEpisode 9 - TikTok Jump, Unpacking Avatars and the Changing Power Equation in Hollywood
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 you’ll never need to leave TikTok to do almost anything. It might even obviate the Apple Store tax without lawsuits.
dot.LA's inaugural, in-person summer series event sought to bring some understanding to the creator economy and the myriad ways it's shifting power relationships in Hollywood. The new model is already upending traditional advertising, spurring a slew of startups from old school talent agencies to AI-platforms aimed at boosting influencers' reach and giving once overlooked artists a bigger voice.
AVATARS: Crafting our digital persona is all about trying on different versions of ourselves We are different "people" in different settings and to different groups. Avatars are the gateway drugs to the "multiverse".
Math Is Hard, A Field Guide to GenZ, Facebook Would be King
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 from another study that actually just tested 30k or so BUSINESS INSTAGRAM accounts, where a quarter had more than 100k followers. The clueless author abstracted that to the 1B users.
https://www.adweek.com/media/everyones-an-influencer-now-what/
GETTING TO KNOW YOU - RATHER, THEM: A Guide to Gen Z Through TikTok Trends, Emojis, & Language... There are nearly 3 billion Gen Zs alive today. In 2019, Gen Zs surpassed Millennials to become the largest generation on the planet. And with the oldest Gen Zs still only 26, the generation’s $150 billion in spending power will swell 70% over the next five years. https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-gen-z-through-tiktok-trends
Facebook Wants to be VR King: With a flurry of moves and acquisitions, Facebook is quickly becoming the leader in VR. Sure, Epic and Snap are certainly doing big things – with Epic likely to be the biggest competitor. I’m a big believer in augmented and virtual reality becoming the next big thing someday. If it happens soon, Facebook might well have it’s next Instagram. If not, well, they might well dominate anyway.
https://www.platformer.news/p/is-facebook-cornering-the-vr-market
Episode 7: Bickering Beekeepers, Hashtags, BYOC, Instagram Giveaways, CJ So Cool!
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 60-year old comic strip “Mark Trail”. Since March a “Bikbok” battle between Mark and viral video influencers Professor Bee Sharp, Killer Bee, Cricket Bro and eco-rapper Reptiliannaire has been playing out in newspapers everywhere. OK, maybe this is a coincidence. Or maybe there’s a sinister plot going on. I’m not sure – but it’s just too weird to ignore. Does anyone really win those darn Instagram giveaways? YouTuber CJ So Cool auctions off a third of his future earnings How hashtags went from cringey to cool BYOC - Bring Your Own Community. Why this is the next big trend in the Creator Economy!Episode 6: Is There a Real Kingmaker at TikTok - and did Facebook Drop the Ball on Dropping Likes?
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.
Episode 5: Is This Thing On? - Google's Telepresence Will Change the World
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
Episode 4: Just Because It’s Vertical and Short Doesn’t Make it TikTok. Plus Apple Giveth – and Taketh Away
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 entertainment company today - inspired both by a Matthew Ball article and the Discovery / Warner Bros. merger.
Inside the Creator Economy - Web3 and more!
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: If you’re a creator, you’ve probably had brands approach you offering to sponsor. But how much do you charge? What’s the right way to approach the deal so that both of you win? This post from Famepick details how to respond to inbound brand requests, and helps you maximize your return while retaining rights to your content. It’s also smart for brands to understand, to build successful symbiotic relationships with creators. Scroll to the end for a TLDR response that works nearly every time!
· TikTok Expands SDK for third party developers.
· Just in time for summer – Shorts For All!
Inside the Creator Economy Episode 2
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 been woefully behind the creator economy curve but that’s starting to change. Fan communities unite!
· Hype House coming to Netflix. Title: “Here Comes Hype House Boo Boo” (kidding
· Influence.Co publishes list of how top platforms reward creators.
· Startup Pietra Studio launches, promises to simplify brand development for creators.