TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and the owner of Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid is swiping right on OpenAI. ChatGPT’s response to the new partnership: “I’m thrilled that Match Group matched with me.”

CREATOR PAYDAY

Roblox paid out a whopping total of $741M to creators in 2023

2023 was a profitable year for Roblox’s creator community—especially for the 100 devs who became millionaires by selling in-game assets.

The stats: According to a company filing, Roblox paid out $741 million to 12,000 creators in 2023 (a 19% year-over-year monetary increase from 2022). Here’s how the numbers shook out:

• About 3,500 developers earned at least $10,000.
  
  

• Around 750 devs crossed the $100,000 mark, and a lucky 100 earned at least $1 million.
  
  

• Finally, nine developers struck gold by earning $10 million or more in yearly sales.

The context: With nearly two decades and 180 million daily active users under its belt, it’s little surprise that Roblox’s operations have attracted a fair amount of scrutiny. Past investigations have questioned whether the sandbox title’s underage game devs are properly compensated.

• Now, Roblox is doing its best to put those questions to bed. Combined with 2023’s higher payout, the platform has revamped its Creator Marketplace to give creators 100% of the earnings from assets like models and plugins.

Why it matters: The rise of the metaverse is bringing Roblox’s community of forward-thinking creators and underage users into the spotlight. The majority of Roblox users are 16 or younger—a demographic that can be difficult to woo through traditional marketing.

• Brands seeking to appeal to those Gen Z and Gen A consumers are increasingly turning to Roblox, where major companies like Lionsgate and creator-led brands like Mark Rober’s Crunchlabs have already launched branded experiences. That phenomenon brings about a myriad of opportunities for Roblox’s thriving dev community, which stands to increase its profitability through brand collaborations and campaigns.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Caption your short videos for free with OpusClip’s brand-new AI tool

With OpusClip’s new AI captioning tool, adding subtitles to short videos is quick, easy, and 100% free.

Here’s how you can caption your Shorts, Reels, and TikToks in seconds:

• Add captions to any video under 2 minutes long, completely free. 🔥
  
  

• No login needed. Just upload your video and click “Add Captions”! ⏩
  
  

• Choose from viral templates designed by top creators like Jon Youshaei and Sean Cannell. 🤔
  
  

• Run out of uploads? They refresh daily! 🗓️

Want to add captions to longer videos? Subscribe to Standard or Pro to caption videos and video segments up to 15 mins long with OpusClip’s new caption-only mode.

More must-have AI tools: As the world’s #1 AI video clipping platform, OpusClip’s editing and analytics tools go way beyond captioning. 

• OpusClip uses proprietary data and GPT technology to identify the most valuable clips in long-form videos—and turn them into top-performing Shorts, TikToks, and Reels. 
  
  

• Opus Clip’s 500K+ users are already seeing incredible results, from 70% higher revenue (Ebonie Dion) to 65% more subscribers (Ricardo Hernandez).

Hit the link below to check out OpusClip’s free captioning tool:

Caption your videos for free →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• YouTuber Kinigra Deon has signed a deal with Night, the talent management firm that works with top stars like Jesser and MrBeast. (Tubefilter)
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• After bringing in more than 8 billion lifetime views on YouTube, Morphle is coming to Disney Junior and Disney+ with a brand-new series called Morphle and the Magic Pets. (Tubefilter)
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• Meta’s latest test feature gives some Facebook users the ability to cross-post links and text-based content to Threads. (Engadget)
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• FTC Chair Lina Khan says Twitter employees offset data security risks by disobeying direct orders from Elon Musk to take "actions that would have violated the FTC's Order." (Ars Technica)

COLUMNS • CREATORS ON THE RISE 📈

This Celine Dion devotee is bringing TikTok viewers back to the ‘90s

Alexander Joe (aka @alexbegs) “always wanted a platform.” He just didn’t know Celine Dion would help him realize that dream—at least, not until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

How it started: Like “a lot of creative people,” Alexander Joe began questioning his 9-to-5 career trajectory in 2020. He was starting to feel seriously bogged down by work and school when a professor suggested he check out TikTok.

• It didn’t take long for Alexander Joe to find his niche. The creator’s first series—a “campy” take on life in the Midwest—earned him 100,000 followers.

• His second series was an even bigger hit. A video of Alexander Joe drinking wine while listening to Celine Dion scored 10 million views almost overnight. Clearly, ‘90s nostalgia and Midwest mom-core was the way to go.

How it’s going: That content has now earned Alexander Joe more than 900 million followers, and he’s spent the last year embracing his “healing girl” era. The creator has fully recommitted himself to being present, spending time with family and friends, and taking some well-deserved breaks.

What’s up next: The next era of Alexander Joe has arrived. With 2024 in full swing, the TikToker is ready to “dive in more to content creating and do a lot of different series,” including longer YouTube videos and (hopefully!) a podcast.

DATA • GLOBAL TOP 50 📊

MaviGadget is back on top with 664M views. Can a thumbnail aficionado keep up?

Three YouTube channels topped the worldwide charts during the third week of February—but only one scored at least 650 million views.

🛍️ The gadget hub (664.6M views): After ranking as the #2 most-viewed U.S. channel for the month of January, MaviGadget is enjoying a similarly viral February.

• The channel (which touts itself as a “unique marketplace” for gadgets and gizmos) rose to #1 in our latest weekly Global Top 50 chart thanks to a seven-day viewership increase of 58%.

💅 The thumbnail artist (6.04M views): ToRung might not occupy the top spot it claimed last week, but the Vietnam-based Shorts channel is still holding its own.

• The hub leveraged its provocative (and often unnerving) thumbnails to score more than 600 million views in the third week of February—despite claiming less than half as many subscribers as MaviGadget.

🎸 The music giant (557.1M views): T-Series almost always finishes at #1 or #2 in the Global Top 50. This week went a little differently: the most-watched and most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time lost 19% of its traffic week-over-week, dropping it to third place in our worldwide ranking.

WATCH THIS 📺

Would the CEO of YouTube survive a day as a creator’s intern?

A star-studded collab: Neal Mohan might be the CEO of YouTube, but Haley Kalil—aka Haleyybaylee—called the shots for (most of) the pair’s recent collaboration. The creator/exec duo linked up for an Undercover Boss-style sketch in which Mohan endured a day as Kalil’s intern. The result: a video with some serious The Devil Wears Prada vibes and an unfortunate ending for Kalil.

• Videos like this one have given the Shorts star a serious leg up in 2024. Kailil collected 94.2 million weekly views during the third week of February alone—a total that added up to a 32% week-over-week traffic increase.

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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.