TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday and while other kids get detention slips for writing essays with ChatGPT, students at a school in Arizona will soon be taught 100% by AI.

Today’s News

BEAST MODE

MrBeast’s Beast Games promotional tour took him from Roblox to Times Square

The PR circuit: The first season of MrBeast’s long-awaited competition show (aka Beast Games) has finally arrived on Amazon Prime Video. That premiere follows a controversial production process that reportedly left many contestants hungry, exhausted, injured, and litigious—and a subsequent promotional tour designed to redirect viewers’ attention to the show’s high-adrenaline challenges.

To build hype for the big premiere, MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) ventured to Times Square, appeared on hit podcasts, and even made his Roblox debut. Here’s a snapshot of the stops on the Beast Games hype train:

• The winner of Beast Games will take home $5 million, so naturally Donaldson brought all that prize money to Times Square and showed it off in front of dozens of fans.
  
  

• Weekly Beast Games-themed Roblox challenges gave fans a digital taste of the Prime Video original’s competitive environment.
  
  

• A pool of 2,000 contestants was cut in half throughout a MrBeast YouTube video, which served as a preliminary challenge filmed adjacent to the main Beast Games set.
  
  
  

• MrBeast joined forces with financial platform MoneyLion to launch a $4.2 million sweepstakes. Eligible entrants in the U.S. can submit their email addresses for a chance to become one of 1,000+ winners.
  
  

• Amazon Fresh debuted Beast Games-branded grocery delivery bags in major cities like New York, Chicago, and L.A.
  
  

• From Theo Von’s This Past Weekend to Beyond the Records, MrBeast made plenty of cameos in top podcasts—including one in which he challenged an Olympic sprinter to a race.

• Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night NFL Football game between the Broncos and Chargers featured a trio of Beast Games commercials with announcer Al Michael’s reading the copy to kick things off. 
  
  

• And to finish things off: a streaming extravaganza. Alongside collaborators like Jnyxzi, Donaldson is bringing some signature MrBeast-style entertainment to Twitch by giving away $10,000 live on stream.

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Jessica Hawks has earned over $2M by teaching up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Her secret: Kajabi.

After reaching 1M followers across TikTok and Instagram, Jessica Hawks knew she wanted to help other creators reach their own goals. So, she decided to become a business coach. 

The problem: Online coaching platforms were outdated and social media platforms were centered around “pleasing the algorithm.”

Then Jessica found Kajabi: an all-in-one course and coaching platform where creators can set up 100% self-owned businesses. Jessica quickly created a self-paced online course—aka Digital Creatives Academy—and private coaching sessions. 

The result: Jessica has earned over $2M in sales and now makes 6-7 figures every year on Kajabi.

That revenue offers Jessica a boost of security during an age of social media platform updates, shifting algorithms, and potential bans:

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• News aggregator Flipboard has announced an app called Surf that will consolidate content from federated social networks like Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Bluesky’s latest update includes the release of ease-of-access features like a news Mentions tab. (The Verge)
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• A sophisticated crypto phishing scam on X has targeted several gaming YouTubers by manufacturing fake sponsorship offers from major brands. (Ars Technica)
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• After developing 5 of the top 15 branded games on Roblox, metaverse media company Gamefam says its various Roblox and Fortnite campaigns attracted over 2.7 billion brand engagements in 2024. (VentureBeat)

BAIT AND SWITCH

YouTube is cracking down on “egregious clickbait.”

The crackdown: YouTube is zeroing in on clickbaiters. Over “the coming months,” the Google-affiliated hub says it plans to begin cracking down on “egregious clickbait” in India with a policy shift that will lead to the removal of some videos with overstated titles and/or misleading thumbnails.

Videos in the current events and breaking news categories will be particularly scrutinized, as YouTube aims to root out uploads that could misinform viewers about important topics.

The context: It’s no surprise that YouTube is kickstarting its anti-clickbait campaign in South Asia. Traffic in the region is on the rise, with Western creators becoming more popular and viewers often serving as guinea pigs for new features. This time around, YouTube is limiting its initial test to India alone—but it wouldn’t surprising if the platform’s clickbait crackdown ultimately expands to other regions as well.

Despite ridicule from viewers and creators alike, some video makers still go to extreme lengths to produce clickbait—and often bring in massive viewership numbers as a result.

HIT SNOOZE

Should sleep streams be banned? One platform thinks so.

The context: Sleeping on stream has become commonplace for Twitch stars like Kai Cenat, who finished the year with 184.5 million annual watch hours after wrapping up a 30-day, 24/7 subathon. Sometimes those snooze fests feature other forms of entertainment. During his monthlong-event, for instance, Cenat, invited celebrity guests to keep viewers engaged while he slept. But other streamers—including emilycc, who’s been live for three years straight—simply turn the camera towards the bed or display automated content onscreen while they nap.

The ban: Parti isn’t on board with that. Just one month after launching, the crypto-centric streaming hub has banned sleeping on streams. That decree makes it the first platform to ban people from sleeping on stream and the first to mandate that creators be actively engaged with their audience while they’re live. A lack of similar guidelines on Twitch, Kick, and YouTube has led to some bad actors pulling up other creators’ videos and leaving the room—but it’s also allowed Twitch stars like Cenat and Ironmouse to host lucrative, uber-long streams.

The platform: A ban on sleep streams isn’t the only thing that differentiates Parti from other streaming platforms. The company is ostensibly a competitor for Twitch and Kick, with streaming categories like gaming, chatting, and fitness. But it’s also heavily centered around crypto, with an onsite currency (aka “Parti Points”) that will convert to streamer “rewards” when the platform’s “Parti Token” launches.

The development of that token is currently being tracked through stages like “Ignition,” “Liftoff,” and “Interplanetary,” although an actual launch date hasn’t yet been revealed. In the meantime, Parti says it will sign contracts with 30 streamers, who will be paid between $1K and $10K per month to go live on its platform—assuming they can stay awake, of course.

WATCH THIS 📺

Instagram’s upcoming text-to-video AI tool will let creators transform their backgrounds, clothes, and more

The teaser: Adam Mosseri has revealed the next big AI feature coming to Instagram. In a teaser posted yesterday, the Instagram head showed off a text-to-video tool that will allow creators “to change nearly any aspect of your videos.”

Over the course of a few seconds, Mosseri cycled through a series of changes to his own outfit and background: he donned a leather jacket, switched his setting to a snowy mountaintop (complete with a matching fur coat), and introduced a hippo to the scene.

Check out the full video here to see the upcoming tool in action.

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