It's Thursday, and a recent interview has fans wondering whether Beast Industries is aiming for an IPO. So, could MrBeast be destined for the stock market?

Today’s News

YEAR IN REVIEW

Twitch collected 900M watch hours in 2025. Now, it’s recapping the year’s top trends.

The recap: YouTube and Spotify aren’t the only platforms recapping the past 12 months. In addition to offering users personalized summaries of their 2025 activity, Twitch has dropped a rundown of the streamers, categories, and trending topics that defined its platform over the last year.

Twitch organized that 2025 recap as a collection of 25 Clips that highlight some of the biggest streamer moments and cultural milestones of the year. The resulting collage depicts a transitional moment for the Amazon-owned hub, which is moving beyond its gaming roots to incorporate a varied array of categories.

The details: Twitch’s increasingly inclusive approach allowed it to attract nearly 900 million hours of watch time, 45 billion chat messages, and nine million new streamers (including pro athletes and traditional celebs like Justin Bieber). IRL streams were one of 2025 biggest winners, with watch time in that category nearly tripling year-over-year.

Despite Twitch’s evolving ecosystem, however, its ranking of top creators hasn’t shifted too much over the last 12 months. Kai Cenat and Ibai delivered the year’s top streaming moments—just as they did in 2024—and “Just Chatting” remains the platform’s biggest category.

Other streams memorialized in Twitch’s Clips demonstrate the ingenuity of its creator community. From Squeezie’s GP Explorer race to a record-setting charity drive to the first stream in space, 2025 delivered a series of live broadcasts that expanded Twitch’s scope. Even the decision to arrange the year-end recap as a Clip collection exemplifies shifting trends in the world of streaming media.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• From December 8-10, BRIDGE Summit will bring 60,000 attendees to Abu Dhabi for a first-of-its-kind multimedia conference. Here’s our official guide to the big event. (Tubefilter - Partner Story)
  
  

• What happens when a creator changes everything about the way he makes content? We interviewed SystemZee to find out how he pulled it off—and revitalized his channel in the process. (Tubefilter - Partner Story)
  
  

• Meta has reportedly poached long-time Apple executive and user interface design lead Alan Dye.  (TechCrunch)
  
  

• Spotify is putting an interactive twist on its 2025 Wrapped recaps with a live feature that allows users to compare listening stats with up to nine friends. (TechCrunch)

INTO THE METAVERSE

Fortnite’s latest world builder is Quentin Tarantino

The premiere: Fortnite isn’t just an arena for battle royales and branded experiences—it’s becoming a home for auteur cinema, too. In an unexpected turn of events, Quentin Tarantino has premiered a “lost chapter” of his revered Kill Bill franchise within Epic Games’ virtual sandbox.

That short—titled The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge—was initially written into Kill Bill: Volume 1, but ultimately left on the cutting room floor. Tarantino himself admitted that “maybe the ship had sailed” on that particular chapter of his swordplay saga.

Then he met with Epic Games.

As a result of those conversations, Yuki’s Revenge premiered within Fortnite on November 30. Epic Games marked the occasion with the debut of an on-theme outfit that lets players dress up like The Bride, Uma Thurman’s Kill Bill heroine.

The context: Tarantino may seem like an unusual partner for Fortnite, but he’s not the first filmmaker or studio to dive into the world of metaverse-style experiences. Virtual spaces are quickly becoming important marketing vehicles for Hollywood’s floundering mainstream, with James Cameron teaming up with Meta to develop cinematic experiences for Quest headsets and Lionsgate turning to Roblox to promote The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

If Tarantino’s decision to get on board with Fortnite helps Kill Bill distributor Lionsgate score a win with its upcoming theatrical rerelease of his iconic saga, we could see many more classic films reinterpreted as pixelated spectacles.

CREATOR COLLECTIVE

NBC wants to turn the Winter Olympics into a creator spectacle

The Creator Collective: With two months to go until the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics, NBCUniversal is relaunching the Creator Collective that made its debut ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

As part of that inaugural program, the parent company of NBC (aka the official broadcaster for the Olympics) sent 27 creators to the City of Lights to provide on-the-ground coverage and analysis. Digital viewership surged amid the 2024 Paris Games as a response, with NBCU’s Creator Collective “garnering nearly 300 million views” (per NBC Sports EVP of Advertising Sales and Partnerships Peter Lazarus).

The channel: Two years later, a second cohort of 25+ creators will head to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the two Italian cities hosting Winter Olympic events. That 2026 Collective includes creators across multiple platforms, including YouTubers Cleo Abram and Jordan Howlett, TikTokers Anna Sitar and Ashley Yi, and Instagram creators Lionfield and QCP.

The starpower of NBCU’s 2026 cohort will likely contribute to some impressive viewership numbers—but while creators contributed to an uptick in 2024, their coverage didn’t exactly receive rave reviews. Take Alex Cooper: although the influencer brought Gen Z fans to NBC by appearing on the network during the Paris Games, detractors argued that she was a poor fit for international sports coverage.

Those complaints have only grown louder as creators have become more present within the pro sports landscape, leaving broadcasters like NBC at an impasse. Influencer integrations are an easy way to get young consumers more interested in sports, but those partnerships also risk alienating older viewers. As NBCU figures out how to incorporate creators into the Milan-Cortina Games, it will need to tread carefully.

WATCH THIS 👀

Maybelline’s latest holiday promo is a TikTok-style minidrama with Hallmark vibes

Maybe This Christmas: If you were a fan of Netflix’s 2024 holiday rom-com Hot Frosty, this one’s for you. To promote its Instant Eraser Concealer, Maybelline reunited the actors behind the streaming service’s (ethically questionable) love story for a short-form series that channels the growing popularity of minidramas.

Maybe This Christmas might not have a typical Hallmark ending (this is your only warning), but it definitely fits into the wave of bite-sized soap operas that have spawned the launch of multiple studios and streaming platforms.

Check out the full video series here.

Want to introduce your brand to Tubefilter’s audience? Sponsor the newsletter.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.​

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