TOGETHER WITH

Welcome to Wednesday! It’s now been 18 years since Jawed Karim uploaded “Me at the Zoo,” the first video in YouTube history. In related news, I suddenly feel old.

ANOTHER YEAR IN ANAHEIM

Going to VidCon Anaheim in June? Here’s what you can expect across all three tracks.

It’s going to be another busy year at VidCon Anaheim. VidCon’s flagship event won’t return to the Anaheim Convention Center for another two months, but its official schedule has now been released.

Let’s hit some highlights, starting on the Industry Track:

VidCon’s Industry passes are pricier than their Creator and Community counterparts, but they provide access to informative panels, keynotes, and workshops. When the Orange County convention reconvenes on June 21, execs from TikTok, Twitch, and Snap will flock to the Anaheim Convention Center to share the past year’s insights with attendees.

They’ll be joined by representatives from VidCon’s title sponsor: YouTube. The platform’s Vice President of Product Management Amjad Hanif will deliver an Industry Track keynote, and he’ll be joined at VidCon by colleagues like Head of Gaming Leo Olebe and Senior Director of Discovery & Growth Todd Beaupré.

As for the YouTube bigwigs who are currently absent from the current Industry Track schedule? That list includes newly-inaugurated Head Neal Mohan.

DIY course creation platform Kajabi will sponsor the Creator Track.

The creator economy firm is upping its VidCon presence after reaching $5 billion in total payouts. It will attach its name to a track that provides panels, informative sessions, and networking opportunities for online video professionals.

There are a lot of Featured Creators who have already been confirmed as part of this year’s VidCon Anaheim lineup. Three specific attendees — ZHC, King Science, and Kat Blaque — will receive a special honor.

They will design limited-edition t-shirts that will be available exclusively at VidCon. Only 150 shirts will be available in each design, so if you want one, don’t plan to sleep in.

And for the fans, there’s the Community Track.

Amid all the performances and meet-and-greets, VidCon will recognize the importance of sustainability with its first-ever Night of Impact.

Have you ever wanted to respect your Mother Earth while watching Sofie Dossi’s unique contortionist act or experiencing KreekCraft’s brand of gaming humor? That experience will be available for Community Track pass holders.

If that doesn’t sound like your bag, there are plenty more options for you to explore across VidCon’s four days of programming. Hit up the official schedule to learn more.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

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Case in point: by posting an existing YouTube video with approximately 400K views on Facebook, one of our creators earned an extra $7500 and received 2.9M views—613% more than the original YouTube post.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Klarna is the latest app attempting to bring Chinese-style social shopping to the West. Can it succeed where other platforms have failed? (Tubefilter)

• American Express is celebrating #BookTok by giving out gift cards on the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day (i.e. April 29). (Tubefilter)
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• Kai Cenat’s Twitch ban lasted one week. The most-subscribed streamer on the platform can now access his account again. (Dexerto)
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• TikTok is a video app, a search engine, and a restaurant guide. Now, it’s apparently being used as a real estate platform, too. (Vice)

DATA • U.S. TOP 50 📈

This YouTube channel decides Who Is The Best at short-form trends.

It’s time for YouTube Shorts’ favorite in-feed game show. Say it with me now: Who…is…the…best! That’s the name of a channel that used its meme aggregation skills to reach our U.S. Top 50 this week.

The most-watched Who Is The Best videos are actually four videos wrapped into one.

Those clips are arranged in a grid format and synced up to popular soundbites from the short-form world. In the top Who Is The Best upload, which has 72 million views, four people reveal what’s hiding under their big heads of hair. I think that bottom-left did it best, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

Who Is The Best is part of a larger trend on YouTube Shorts. The format has given a platform to content aggregators who share their most popular memes from across Shorts, Reels, and TikTok. This isn’t the first time one of those aggregators has launched itself into our Top 50 charts, but Who Is The Best has found a unique approach to what are essentially glorified reports.

Turns out that a competition-based content aggregator is a pretty popular idea.

• Over our latest seven-day measurement period, Who Is The Best picked up 113.3 million weekly views.

• That was 28% more views than the total Who Is The Best posted seven days prior.

• That uptick has allowed the Shorts channel to move into 44th place in the U.S. Top 50.

SNAP JUDGEMENTS

A lot of people are excited about AI, but some Snap users are not amused.

This week, Snapchat’s official listing on the App Store was bombarded with one-star reviews. But people don’t hate the app’s signature features. Rather, they’re mad about Snap’s AI assistant.

Specifically, people don’t like the placement of the “My AI” feature.

Like many tech companies, Snap has teamed up with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to launch its own experiments in the world of artificial intelligence. Snap users can chat with My AI if they want to have their own automated assistant.

But Snap probably should have made it possible to hide My AI. Instead, the new feature was automatically pinned to the top of chat feeds, with no way to remove it. Yeah, you can ask Bono how that sort of stuff tends to go over. Consumers don’t like it when they’re forced to adopt new products — hence all the one-star reviews.

There are some issues with the actual AI, too.

In a viral tweet, My AI recommended a local restaurant to a user, even though it told her that it was not accessing her location. Congratulations, world. We have finally taught robots how to gaslight us.

WATCH THIS 📺

So long, Carpool Karaoke.

As James Corden prepares to abdicate his hosting duties on The Late Late Show, he is bidding farewell to his signature late-night bit. For the final installment of Carpool Karaoke, Corden is bringing back one of his greatest guests: Adele.

Corden’s take on The Late Late Show has always been divisive, but no matter how you feel about him, you can’t deny that his carpool sing-alongs have always had soul — especially when Adele is involved.

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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.