It’s Monday and LinkedIn is letting its hair down. The networking platform’s latest feature-in-progress: Puzzle games that rank businesses based on staff members’ scores.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

“Business-in-a-box” platform COY Creator is bringing Will Keenan aboard

COY Creator is beefing up its leadership team. The creator economy startup has hired former Endemol Beyond President Will Keenan as its new Chief Revenue Officer.

The company: There’s a reason Variety describes COY Creator as a “business-in-a-box” platform. The startup (which is currently in a beta period) allows pro creators to host experiences and content on personalized URLs. COY’s official launch is scheduled to take place later this month.

The new hire: Keenan brings both valuable connections and over a decade of experience to his new role at COY. The exec got his start in Hollywood before transitioning to Maker Studios. His next role—in which he developed content and commerce initiatives alongside creators like Brittany Furlan and Michelle Phan at Endemol Shine North America’s in-house network—made waves in the creator community.

• Keenan followed that position with a brief stint as President of “Netflix of live video” Streamup. Then, in 2015, he left the creator industry altogether to found a nonprofit in New Jersey.

Why it matters: Industry pros will want to keep an eye on COY as it leverages Keenan’s entertainment know-how and high-level connections. In the wake of his hiring, the startup has signed a deal with prankster Ed Bassmaster (who worked with Keenan at Streamup and Maker) and, according to Variety, has entered talks with one-time Vine star King Bach.

• Keenan is confident that COY’s “‘B2B2C’ (business-to-business-to-creator)” strategy will be a successful one. The exec describes the startup as “the future of Hollywood” and “the perfect place…for me to make a return to the entertainment industry.”

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• The Chinese government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused the U.S. of treading on freedom of speech by “unreasonably suppressing” TikTok. (Tubefilter)
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• Twitch plans to shut down Watch Parties—a feature that enabled co-viewing for Prime Video content—on April 2. (Tubefilter)
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• Spotify will give audiobook authors access to its previously music-exclusive Countdown Pages promo feature in mid-April. (The Verge)
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• U.S. TikTok users are expressing frustration at Representative Jeff Jackson (D-NC), a congressman who gained 2.5 million followers on TikTok before voting to ban the app last week. (The Verge)

COLUMNS • MILLIONAIRES 📈

Meet the third-grade teacher who went viral for charging her students rent

How it started: Shelby Lattimore was in her third year of teaching when she decided to give her students a crash course in financial responsibility. The creator wanted her third-graders to learn about money “in a safe environment,” so she did something unorthodox: she charged them rent.

• In exchange for performing classroom duties, Lattimore’s students earned (fake) money that they could use to buy rewards—as long as they saved enough to pay rent.
  
  

• Lattimore let her students adjust to the chores-and-rewards part of that system for a few months before introducing the idea of rent. She knew the first day of actually collecting those payments was sure to be entertaining. So, she filmed the process (without showing her students’ faces) and shared the video in a family group chat. Her sister’s response was immediate: “Put it on TikTok.”
  
  

• Lattimore took that advice and ran with it. Her very first video “blew up”—and as millions of views flooded in, teachers began reaching out to learn how they could implement Lattimore’s ideas into their own classrooms.

How it’s going: A year later, Lattimore’s TikTok account has grown to encompass more than a million followers and she’s also branched out onto Instagram and YouTube. As a result, she says, “so many teachers are taking this and turning this into their own classroom economies.”

What’s up next: Being a full-time teacher and a content creator isn’t easy, but Lattimore is more than willing to put in the work. In addition to “trying to step into YouTube,” the creator says she’s “creating two forms of my class economy so that it can be a step-by-step instructional manual type of thing for other teachers.”

SHARING IS CARING

Skillshare plans to open new monetization channels with the acquisition of Superpeer

The acquisition: Skillshare is about to become even more valuable to its community of 8,000+ creators and 740,000+ subscribers. The learning platform has acquired Superpeer, a four-year-old company that offers tools for online course creators to connect with students.

The plan: Skillshare says it aims to integrate Superpeer’s tools (which include offerings like paid 1:1 calls and supplemental liven streams) into “the Skillshare experience” to create a “customizable learning experience” and open new monetization channels for instructors.

• That integration is slated to happen “over the coming months” and will include the onboarding of Superpeer co-founder/CTO Fatih Acet, who will continue leading development of Superpeer’s tools as part of the Skillshare team.

The big picture: More and more creators are searching for supplemental revenue streams to offset the unpredictability of the creator economy—and Skillshare is adapting to meet that demand.

• The platform—which currently offers 30,000 courses—has increasingly worked with content creators to promote their classes. Now, CEO Matt Cooper says Skillshare’s acquisition of Superpeer will allow it to “deliver new value” to teachers “seeking new ways to earn a living from their considerable knowledge and experience.”

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

The founder: The latest installment of Creator Upload brings listeners into the lesser-known world of LinkedIn creators. Tune in as Josh Cohen and Lauren Schnipper link up with Creator Authority co-founder Brendan Gahan, who recently launched the first-ever LinkedIn influencer marketing agency alongside Mekanism vet Mandi Hopper.

Tune in: Check out the episode to find out more about Creator Authority and Gahan’s vision for the future of LinkedIn’s creator economy. It’s all right here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.