TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and TikTok and Meta have emerged victorious in a lawsuit against the European Commission. The case challenged the fee structure for the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act. If the EU wants to continue to regulate, it may have to call Warren G.

Today’s News

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Vimeo has a new parent company thanks to a $1.38 billion deal

The deal: Four years after it was spun off from its previous owner, Vimeo has been acquired. The video platform known for its longtime support of independent artists will become a property of Milan-based tech conglomerate Bending Spoons.

The deal, which was announced via the Vimeo website, is an all-cash transaction. Bending Spoons will pay $1.38 billion to acquire Vimeo, which is also undergoing a round of layoffs. The acquisition is expected to close during the fourth quarter of this year.

The history: Vimeo was founded in 2004, beating YouTube to market by a few months. The platform upheld its artsy reputation through creator-friendly distribution options and its Staff Picks, which highlighted auteurs who would later go on to hit the big screen.

Turning indie cred into a sustainable business model isn’t easy, and Vimeo’s expansion efforts — including pushes into SVOD content and short-form video — stalled. In 2021, owner InterActiveCorp (aka IAC) chose to spin off Vimeo, and the platform operated as a publicly traded entity for the next four years.

The future: Vimeo’s days on Wall Street will likely be coming to an end, as Bending Spoons plans to take its new holding private. Financially speaking, the independent Vimeo is going out with a bang, as its stock price jumped 60% to $7.74 after the acquisition news broke (though that’s still way down from its all-time high of $58.00 in May 2021).

Bending Spoons will have to decide how to promote synergy between Vimeo and its other brands, including file hosting service WeTransfer, virtual notebook Evernote, and social group planner Meetup. Some of the companies have ventured into the world of video content themselves, so the opportunities for partnerships are there, if Bending Spoons wants to go that route.

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Since 2014, leading creators, brands, and agencies have joined forces at VidSummit to share everything from under-the-radar monetization strategies to unorthodox audience-building techniques in expert-led workshops, panels, and keynotes.

Because VidSummit is the only event where the top 1% of creators share their secrets.

Claim your spot to mingle with industry leaders at an invite-only kickoff party, learn the secrets to maximizing viewership, and delve into the trends that will define digital media.

Tickets to VidSummit have sold out every year for the past half-decade. Hit the link below to snag yours before space runs out:

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• TikTok is closing the search gap. It’s long been rumored that TikTok is challenging Google’s longtime search dominance—at least, among Gen Z. Now the platform says it can prove that, with data showing 86% of Zoomers use TikTok Search at least once per week—while 90% say they use Google once a week. (Tubefilter)

• A former Wondery exec is planning to make her bank with a generative AI business that slops out 3,000 podcast episodes per week for $1 a pop in production costs. Oh, and she thinks people who call her company’s output slop are “lazy luddites.” (The Hollywood Reporter)
  

• Spotify now has a special audiobook section for titles that got “Big on BookTok.” (Book Riot)
  

• San Francisco has Waymo, Las Vegas has…Amazon? Drunk revelers can now roll between casinos in box-shaped, vintage-glossy robotaxis from the ecommerce giant’s subsidiary Zoox. (Dexerto)

20 YEARS OF YOUTUBE

20 years of YouTube: In 2022, Minecraft fans made sure that Technoblade never dies

In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

The legend: Over a decade-long period that began in 2013, Technoblade established himself as one of the foremost Minecraft creators on YouTube. His adventures with the Dream SMP crew made his kingly pig avatar a familiar sight for many, and his untimely death from cancer in 2022 elevated him to icon status.

Technoblade’s farewell video, titled “so long, nerds,” has been seen more than 120 million times to date. It expresses the qualities that made the gamer so special: Even amid dire circumstances, he never lost his positive attitude, and he did everything in his power to create a space where anyone and everyone could feel welcome.

The community: Technoblade’s death came amid rising scrutiny of the parasocial relationships that can form between creators and their fans. The strong bond between Technoblade and his viewers led many to mourn him as if he were a personal friend.

His legacy is a reminder that the creator-fan relationship can be a force for good, too.

Technoblade imbued his subscribers with a sense of belonging, and they paid him back by carrying on his charitable efforts years after his death. There has been a noticeable uptick in donations to organizations that research sarcomas, like the one that afflicted Technoblade. Feel free to add to that tally if you’re feeling so inclined.

METRIC SHAKEUP

Reddit axes community member counts

The old ways: For years, Reddit’s many communities have shown off their sizes with a single figure: the number of people who hit “Join.”

But Reddit now says that metric isn’t a real indicator of communities’ activity, since plenty of subreddits are visited by lurkers (aka people who don’t post or comment, but do read, often prolifically), as well as non-members who contribute posts and/or comments.

The new numbers: The new Visitors metric shows how many unique visitors were on a particular subreddit in the past seven days, “based on a rolling 28-day average,” Reddit explained. As for Contributions, that figure shows the number of posts and comments made in a subreddit over the past seven days (minus those that were removed for rule violations etc).

We get these changes, especially considering Reddit’s real-people-centric branding (it calls itself “the most human place on the internet”) and its push to become a more content creator-forward platform.

As the company noted, this change will count not just a subreddit’s number of active participants, but also the amount of content being made on a rolling basis. More performance metrics, not to mention more accurate performance metrics, might draw more creators—and more advertisers.

WATCH THIS

How much Scorigami will we get during this year’s NFL season?

The final score: If you follow the sportswriter and creator Jon Bois on social media, you’re likely familiar with his obsession with the concept he has dubbed “Scorigami.” The term refers to NFL games that finish with final scores that have never previously occurred in the league’s history.

Bois and colleague Alex Rubenstein have taken their love of the Scorigami to the Secret Base channel, where they have kicked off a four-part series that dives into the most unique final scores the NFL has ever seen. If you want early access to the next three installments, you’ll have to support Bois and co. on Patreon.

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