TOGETHER WITH

It's Monday and Amouranth fans have an interesting opportunity on their hands. The Twitch streamer has partnered with Forever Voices AI to create her own “realistic” (and romantically available) AI persona.

SOCIAL MEDIA SHOE-INS

The D’Amelios are leaving their footprint on the fashion industry. The TikTok-famous clan—which includes social media icons Charli and Dixie and their parents Marc and Heidi D’Amelio—has launched D’Amelio Footwear, a new venture offering a variety of women’s shoes.

Fashion enthusiasts have Head Footwear Designer Lauren DiCicco—an industry vet who has worked with celebs like Jessica Simpson—to thank for the styles of the D’Amelios’ new kicks. The family’s shoe brand was on full display at a May 18th launch party in Los Angeles, where Charli, Dixie, and their parents welcomed guests like Real Housewives star Teresa Giudice, University of Connecticut basketball star Azzi Fudd, and creators Tana Mongeau, Jack Wright, and Jason Nash. Models stood atop tables to give those high-profile partygoers a peek at the D’Amelios’ new product line, before they departed with footwear-filled gift bags of their own.

Even without those celebrity associations, D’Amelio Footwear is entering the retail space on strong footing. The TikTok family’s new company is the first one born out of D’Amelio Brands, which arrived last year with $6 million of venture capital behind it.

🔆 PARTNERED 🔆

Introducing Famous Birthdays Pro: Your go-to resource for discovering breakout creators and tracking rising stars

The creator industry’s first-ever talent rep directory has arrived. With 3,500+ agency rosters and 250,000 creator rank graphs, Famous Birthdays Pro makes it easy to discover and target rising creators across all platforms and categories.

So you can track your own talent roster, or discover the next online superstar.

It all comes down to Famous Birthdays Pro’s first-party data—and the 20 million users that now visit the Famous Birthdays site every month. Pro analyzes its proprietary data to give subscribers access to real-time popularity rankings. And since Famous Birthdays has 270,000 proprietary celebrity/creator bios and knows the specific content focus of each creator, its rising creator reports are always highly targeted.

That means you’ll be able to…

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Famous Birthdays Pro’s creator and talent rep database is essential for everything from influencer marketing campaigns to creator collabs and talent scouting. Ready to discover how you can leverage the industry’s go-to source for rising creator data?

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• The owners of animated YouTube channel Gracie’s Corner have agreed to produce a collection of empowering videos alongside Snoop’s Doggyland hub. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• YouTuber Lizzy Capri is joining OnlyFans in order to “post content without any limitations.” (Tubefilter)
  ​

• Instagram reportedly plans to launch a “text-based” Twitter alternative before the end of summer. (Engadget)
  ​

• According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney’s next offering may be a standalone ESPN streaming service. (TechCrunch)

DATA • ICYMI 📈

YouTube chipped in $35 billion, CoComelon kept its crown, and a new channel topped the global charts

​#1 - Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • Week Of 05/14/2023​​
The Global Top 50 chart has a new leader. Animation channel DaFuq!?Boom! reached #1 for the first time by collecting a grand total of 791.7 million views over the course of just seven days. The hub’s main appeal: all of its top short-form videos feature long-necked heads popping out of toilet bowls.

#2 - YouTube contributed $35 billion to the U.S. economy in 2022​
YouTube‘s latest impact report delivered some impressive stats. According to estimates from Oxford Economics, the video giant’s creator ecosystem contributed more than $35 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product in 2022 and supported the equivalent of over 390,000 full-time jobs.

​#3 - Top 100 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channels • April 2023​​
CoComelon – Nursery Rhymes had a productive April. The California-based children’s hub received 2.6 billion monthly views, which was twice as much traffic as all-but-one other U.S.-based YouTube channel (aka Alan Chikin Chow).

​#4 - VShojo loses 3 top VTubers, including one who says new contracts didn’t make “financial sense”​
The end of April marked the departure of three prominent creators from VTuber-focused talent company VShojo. Silvervale, Veibae, and Nyanners all elected not to renew their contracts with San Francisco-based agency. Despite that turn of events, VShojo has confirmed that all three VTubers will retain the IP to their characters.

CASE IN POINT

The Supreme Court is keeping Section 230 on the books…for now

Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google have reached their end. In both cases, the Supreme Court favored the defendants—Twitter and Google—via rulings that upheld Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

That resolution is a big win for Big Tech.

Plaintiffs in both Twitter v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google sought to challenge Section 230—a provision that shields social platforms from legal liability so long as they respond to moderation requests in a timely manner—by arguing that tech platforms should be held accountable when their recommendation algorithms surface content created by terrorist groups and their affiliates.

Twitter v. Taamneh concerned Nawras Alasaaf, who was killed in a 2017 ISIS attack in Istanbul. The case revolved around the argument that Twitter was culpable for Alasaaf’s death because it hosted ISIS posts. Gonzalez v. Google centered on similar claims; the family of Nohemi Gonzalez (who lost her life during the 2015 ISIS attack in Paris) looked to strip YouTube of Section 230 protections because the platform’s algortihm promoted terrorist content.

The Supreme Court considered those arguments within the broader context of the open internet, reflecting ongoing concerns about limitations on free speech. Ultimately, the majority opinion was delivered by elder statesman Justice Clarence Thomas:

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

Montana is officially the first U.S. state to ban TikTok. Hosts Lauren Schnipper and Joshua Cohen dissect the consequences of that legislation before jumping into the second-biggest TikTok news of the week: the app’s newly-announced fund for effects creators.

Find out more on the latest episode of Creator Upload. It’s all right here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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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.