It’s Thursday and despite encountering a few whoopsie-daises with its AI Darth Vader, Fortnite is reportedly preparing to introduce a whole slew of new AI NPCs.

Today’s News

SHOPPING SPREE

Miracle Mop maker Joy Mangano is headed to TikTok Shop

The inventor: If you’re a fan of the Jennifer Lawrence-led film Joy, then you already know the story of Miracle Mop maker Joy Mangano. The inventor’s reign of renown began in the ’90s, when she introduced a self-wringing mop, went on QVC to sell it, and moved 18,000 units in half an hour.

Mangano has since invented dozens more products, racked up billions in sales, and risen to become the top host at former QVC competitor HSN. Now, she’s bringing her cleaning product empire to TikTok Shop.

The partnership: To make that move to social media, Mangano is teaming up with Orca. The five-year-old ecommerce startup has sold over $100 million on Shop in the last 12 months with brands like e.l.f Beauty, Esteé Lauder, Alicia Keys‘ Keys Soulcare, SKINN, and KimChi Chic Beauty. Now, it will bring the full range of Mangano’s botanical-based cleaning brand, CleanBoss, to Shop. The ecommerce company will also handle all Shop distribution of CleanBoss, and will market the products through shoppable livestreams, creator affiliate programs, short-form videos, and “targeted performance media.”

That partnership will kick off on June 5 with a livestream featuring Mangano and actress/Shop product recommender Kelly Kruger Brooks. Together, the duo will provide insider ‘hacks’ and demos, chat with fans, and offer exclusive deals.

The takeaway: Orca has become known for its work with digital content creators—but Mangano is different. Her decision to partner with Orca and sell through Shop shows that the hub is not only catching the eye of digital-first creators and brands, but also the legacy entrepreneurs and brands that drove sales on old-school shopping channels in the ’90s and early 2000s.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Meta is reportedly in talks with Disney to bring exclusive streaming content to its next VR headset. (The Verge)
  
  

• A lawsuit filed by Reddit accuses Anthropic of accessing its platform “more than 100,000 times since July 2024” in order to mine content for AI training. (The Verge)
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• Snap has announced the launch of the Lens Studio iOS app, which it says will “make it easier than ever to create, publish, and play with Snapchat Lenses.” (Snap)
  
  

• A three-year collaboration between the Esports World Cup Foundation and Amazon Ads will bring new fan experiences to platforms and services like Twitch, Prime Video, Alexa, and Wondery. (VentureBeat)

20 YEARS OF YOUTUBE

In 2011, we got down on Friday with the ultimate hate-watch

In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

The throwback: Picture this: it’s Friday night in the 2010s, you’re rocking skinny jeans from Urban Outfitters, and a cup of froyo is calling your name. What are you listening to through wired headphones?

Rebecca Black‘s “Friday,” of course.

In 2011, a then-13-year-old Black recorded her infamous bop in tandem with ARK Music Factory, a production company that wrote songs and edited music videos to turn its young clients into one-off pop stars. “Friday” quickly rose to become a case study about internet fame, online hate, and the power of a positive attitude.

The song’s official YouTube video has amassed 175 million lifetime views—and 14 years later, Black is still making music.

The context: So, why did “Friday” attract so much attention—and specifically negative attention—in 2011? As we discussed in our 2010 retrospective, the first years of that decade were the zenith of the viral video, when YouTube’s top clips proved inescapable and creators scrambled to upload reaction content.

With so much attention paid to a small subset of videos, critical backlash was inevitable. 2011 was the heyday of the hipster subculture—when disdain for the mainstream evolved into a lifestyle—and haters were eager to push back against the YouTube virality machine. “Friday” provided the perfect opportunity to diss uninspired art at a time when many viral videos were grating by design. These days, Gen Alpha logs on to watch Skibidi and Spider-Man. In the 2010s, kids had their own brand of brainrot: the literal Annoying Orange.

“Friday” was supposed to go down in history as one of the intentionally grating videos everyone loved to hate, but Black didn’t let that happen. Her graceful reaction to disparaging comments told creators that they didn’t have to see poorly-made videos as black marks. Instead, ill-conceived content could be construed as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

THE BIZ

Viral Nation does a lot more than representation

The agency: When best friends Joe Gagliese and Mat Micheli co-founded Viral Nation in 2014, they initially planned for it to focus on repping people who made YouTube videos—a profession that, at the time, was barely out of infancy.

11 years later, Viral Nation has scaled into one of the biggest talent agencies in the digital content industry, with a roster of 900+ creators and a never-ending “flywheel” of talent, marketing, creative studio, and technology divisions that constantly feed one another. Depending on individual brand clients’ needs, the agency provides influencer marketing, social content production, community management, social-experiential marketing, performance marketing, and business intelligence at all stages, from ideation and strategy to execution and measurement.

The “flywheel”: When Viral Nation partners with a brand client, its Social Studio can produce two tracks of content for their marketing campaign: (1) agency-led content, which is brand-focused and produced in-house by the studio, and (2) creator-led content, where vetted creators make sponsored promotional content.

For the latter content, Viral Nation not only sources talent from its roster, but from social media platforms at large. Its Viral Nation Secure system scans creators’ entire public profiles for overall brand safety and for data like growth trajectories and audience demographics. This customizable process takes around ~48 hours, and is built on the bones of Google’s Gemini AI.

Once a creator/brand partnership has begun, Viral Nation’s tech side returns a constant flow of data about campaign performance. That information is then used on a similarly continuous basis by Viral Nation’s Social Strategy & Community Management arm, which is led by Madison Gaudry-Routledge. If social strategy is all data, Gaudry-Routledge says community management is “all about the human connection aspect.”

Ultimately, the exec says “both brands and creators see more engagement, loyalty, and monetization when we know that the content is well planned, optimized, and well managed.”

FYI: Viral Nation is a Tubefilter partner

WATCH THIS 📺

A baby eagle has 660K subscribers watching with bated breath

The FOBBV Cam: In the world of birdwatching, nothing is quite as exciting as fledging season—and this year, devoted ornithophiles aren’t the only ones eagerly watching to see who’s shacking up, laying eggs, and leaving the nest.

A family of eagles in the San Bernardino National Forest has captured the attention of over 660,000 YouTube subscribers, many of whom have followed Jackie and Shadow’s journey from bickering mates to doting parents. More than 300,000 viewers tuned into the Friends of Big Bear Valley channel this week to witness the duo’s most recent milestone: on June 3, one of Jackie and Shadow’s two chicks took flight for the very first time. Big congrats to baby Sunny!

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.