TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday and Disney Plus is preparing for a password war. In two months time (aka June 2024), the streaming service will officially begin cracking down on suspected account sharers.

NUMBERS GAME

TikTok hopes driving “$15B in revenue” for small businesses will save its bacon

TikTok is battling bad PR—and a potential nationwide ban—with the help of some hefty stats.

The Hail Mary: Following the House’s passage of a proposal that could force its parent company to divest or face an outright ban, TikTok has launched a numbers-driven charm offensive highlighting its support of small businesses.

• On a landing page devoted to its economic impact, the video app outlined the findings of a survey of 1,050 small businesses and 7,500 consumers from all 50 U.S. states and D.C.
  
  

• That study (which was conducted by Oxford Economics) found that TikTok generated $14.7 billion for U.S.-based small businesses in 2023.
  
  

• 88% of surveyed small businesses saw sales increases after promoting products or services on TikTok. 45% of those called TikTok a critical support system for their continued existence.

Why it matters: TikTok is facing an uphill battle—and not just on Capitol Hill itself. As a Senate vote approaches and TikTok prepares to run millions of dollars worth of ads ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the American Parents Coalition is already deploying its own seven-digit ad blitz to expose TikTok’s faults. ad blitz

• Framing itself as a crucial resource for small businesses could give TikTok an edge in that ad war. In total, the app claims to have seven million active businesses on its platform, which collectively support 224,000 jobs in the U.S.—a much larger number than the roughly 36,600 coal mining jobs that triggered so much controversy during the 2016 and 2020 elections.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

The 2024 NAB Show brings an all new creator destination to Las Vegas: Creator Lab

NAB Show has always been a place for thousands of creators, broadcasters, and entertainment professionals to innovate and collaborate. Now, the content industry’s most anticipated event of the year has something new in store: Creator Lab. 

Creator Lab is a window into the future of the multi-billion-dollar creator economy.

From April 14-17, NAB Show presents an unparalleled experience featuring creator-focused workshops, expert-led panels, interactive exhibits, and more. Here’s a sneak peek at Creator Lab’s 30 exclusive sessions:

🚀 Expanding the Creator Economy with MrBeast 🚀
Listen in as the president of MrBeast reveals the process of landing lucrative sponsorships, expanding to TV, creating viral sensations, and more.
Speaker: Marc Hustvedt, MrBeast President
Moderator: Jim Louderback, Inside the Creator Economy 

🌟 Best AI Tools for Creators 🌟 
Discover the best ways to incorporate AI into media generation, production, distribution, and monetization.
Panelists: The Prismatic Company CTO Matthew Feinberg, Curious Future creator Dylan Jorgensen, Awesome Creator Academy author Roberto Blake, Changer Strategic Partnerships Renee Teeley

🔎 The Creator Economy Unveiled 🔎
Unveil the innovative monetization and marketing strategies that allow brands and channels to thrive in the creator economy.
Speaker: Jasmine Enberg, EMARKETER analyst & Business Insider columnist

Ready to score your ticket to NAB Show?

Register Today →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Starforge Systems has revealed a new line of custom PC components in partnership with variety streamer Jaryd ‘summit1g’ Lazar. (Tubefilter)
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• Self-styled “creator age media company” Made In Network has hired Jeremy Azevedo as its new Head of Production. (Tubefilter)
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• In an interview with Eurogamer, Roblox studio head Stefano Corazza framed the platform’s controversial monetization system as “a gift” to underage developers living in poverty. (The Verge)
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• YouTube’s 2024 Coachella livestream will give viewers the ability to “watch up to four stages live at the same time.” (The Verge)

DATA • STREAMERS ON THE RISE 📈

From playing The Sims to Just Chatting, this creator is all about her community

How it started: KandidlyKayla has loved The Sims since she was eleven years old. Twitch—not so much. In fact, the creator hadn’t even heard of the platform until 2020, when her best friend suggested she make an account.

• At first, Kayla wasn’t crazy about the idea—mostly because she really didn’t want to “download another app.” It took a few months for her friend to convince her to start streaming on Twitch. But once he did, Kayla was all in.
  
  

• The creator spent a single week figuring out the platform before going live. Within a month, Kayla had made Affiliate and committed to streaming full-time. Five months later, she was a Partner with a devoted viewership of Sims enthusiasts.
  
  

• That level of online visibility came with a dark side. While Kayla’s close-knit community has shown her plenty of love over the years (including through a battle with cancer), the creator also endured a terrifying period of doxxing and swatting in 2021.

How it’s going: Despite those challenges, Kayla’s love of Twitch never wavered. She now streams games like The Sims, The Walking Dead, and Stardew Valley five days a week to an audience of 40,000 followers, and recently dropped a merch collection in honor of mental health season.

What’s next: From growing her audience to designing anime-inspired merch, Kayla has big plans for 2024. When it comes down to it, however, her top priority is simple: at the end of the day, the creator hopes to “continue to be successful” and “remain positive in this space, because it can be hard.”

SWITCHING GEARS

Facebook is following TikTok’s lead with a full-screen vertical video player

Facebook isn’t missing out on the FYP revolution.

The update: The Meta-owned platform has announced the rollout of a redesigned video player, which features a “consistent” full-screen design and vertical-first appearance. According to Facebook, that newfangled player will allow users to expand videos to full-screen mode with a single tap. Live broadcasts, Reels, and long-form videos alike will initially be oriented vertically (although enhanced controls will make it easy to switch to landscape mode).

• Facebook says its updated player will initially launch on iOS and Android devices in the United States and Canada, with a global rollout scheduled for “the coming months.”

The context: By prioritizing full-screen vertical videos and offering “improved recommendations for videos of all length,” Facebook has concocted a feed that looks a lot like TikTok’s FYP—and adopted the app’s emphasis on multiformat content in the process.

• Over the last year, TikTok has increasingly encouraged creators to diversify their content by experimenting with livestreams and long-form videos. The launch of TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program—which compensates creators of top long-form videos—is the latest step in that strategy.
  
  

• YouTube has taken a similar approach by encouraging creators to spread uploads across long-form videos, Shorts, and live streams. Most recently, the platform introduced Vertical Live, a feature that integrates streams into the Shorts feed.
  
  

• Now, Facebook’s redesigned player will allow creators to harness multiple formats while taking advantage of what is arguably the platform’s greatest asset: its uniquely massive scale.

WATCH THIS 📺

Pirate Software’s “record breaking hypeness” will go down in Twitch history

The Hype Train: Late last year, streamer-slash-developer Pirate Software set a Twitch record by pulling off the longest Hype Train in the platform’s history. All in all, that mass influx of support brought in 7,321 subscriptions and over 1.8 million Bits–or around $60,000.

• Now, Pirate Software has smashed that record all over again. Just one week after Twitch introduced higher goals to the system, the streamer kicked off a three-hour Hype Train consisting of 54,380 subs and more than 8.2 million Bits. The total (estimated) bag: roughly $500,000.

The emote: According to Twitch, Pirate Software’s “record breaking hypeness” unlocked a never-before-seen Hype Train level: 106. The platform was quick to celebrate that achievement with the debut of a brand-new “DidIBreakIt” Emote featuring Pirate Software in the banana costume he wore during the stream. Check it out here.

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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.