TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and a research team at MIT hopes to make chatbots less “vanilla” by encouraging the creation of “antagonistic AI.”

ALL ABOARD

Five top creators are coming to World of Warships

The context: World of Warships is no stranger to the power of YouTube’s creator community. Over the past 90 days alone, the naval combat franchise has served as the sponsor for at least 90 YouTube videos. (per Gospel Stats).

The announcement: Now, World of Warships is taking its influencer-led marketing to the next level. On February 19, the Wargaming-owned franchise teased the upcoming release of custom camouflage, flags, and commander avatars inspired by five top streamers: Moist Cr1TiKaL (aka Charlie White), Sapnap, Ludwig Ahgren, Nadeshot, and CouRage.

• Those streamers join the ranks of several other creators who have collaborated on limited-edition video game characters, including MrBeast (Stumble Guys) and TimTheTatman and Nickmercs (Call of Duty).
  
  

• Wolrd of Warships’ first creator-inspired set—a series of assets modeled after Moist Cr1TiKaL—dropped the same day as its big reveal. Here’s why White decided to lend his likeness to the franchise’s Creatorverse initiative:

Why it matters: White also praised Wargaming for allowing him to be “extremely involved and hands-on” with the design of his in-game skins. That level of creator control isn’t unique to Wargaming’s streamer-focused campaigns; the concept of “creators as creative” is becoming increasingly central to brand partnerships throughout the influencer marketing field.

• The incorporation of creator personalities and feedback isn’t a one-way perk. Prizma Talent Management Founder and CEO Leila Marsh says campaigns that let creators fulfill briefs “in their own tone of voice” and without “being boxed in to only use brand-provided messaging” often yield higher conversion rates and view counts.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

With OpusClip v3.0, you can create Shorts and TikToks 10x faster—without putting in more work

With the world’s #1 AI video clipping tool, creators can produce viral video content in a single click. OpusClip uses proprietary data and GPT technology to identify the most valuable clips in long-form videos—and turn them into top-performing Shorts, TikToks, and Reels.

Now, OpusClip is introducing a new slate of cutting-edge video tools. Discover what you can do with OpusClip v3.0:

• Genre-Specific Curation Model: Specify your video genre (lifestyle vlog, sports, comedy, webinar, etc.), and OpusClip will apply a specific curation model to process your video for better results.
  
  

• Caption-Only Mode: Want to add captions without clipping? No problem: choose your preferred style from a wide range of trendy templates to add animated captions without altering the original video length.
  
  

• Mid-Form Clip Generator: Sit back while OpusClip v3.0 clips your long-form content to create videos ranging from 3 to 15 minutes—the perfect lengths for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm and TikTok’s Creativity Program.
  
  

• AI B-Rolls: Generate and customize contextually relevant B-rolls with OpusClip’s cutting-edge text-to-video AI.
  
  

• Automatic Social Post Title & Descriptions: OpusClip automatically creates descriptions, hashtags, and titles for your videos based on your choice of style.

Ready to take your video content to the next level?

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• George Bryan IV of Bryan Bros Golf, Grant Horvat, Luke Kwon of Good Good, Peter Finch, Micah Morris, and three other creators will compete for a spot on the PGA tour. (Tubefilter)
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• TikTok has tapped Head of Operations Adam Presser to oversee its trust and safety division. (Tubefilter)
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• Users in Brazil, Spain, Australia, and “over a dozen more countries” now have access to YouTube’s standalone editing app, YouTube Create. (TechCrunch)
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• Former Twitter employee Aaron Rodericks will join Bluesky as the app’s new head of Trust and Safety. (TechCrunch)

COLUMNS • STREAMERS ON THE RISE 📈

This creator brings the art of gaming to life

How it started: Suto didn’t intend to become a full-time streamer. In fact, the creator says every step in her Twitch journey “has been a little bit accidental” (and that’s exactly what makes it so much fun).

• The first of those steps led Suto to YouTube. She was looking for a side hustle and had always been interested in art—so, she started making graphics for creators and esports teams. Unsurprisingly, that line of work involved watching a lot of content.
  
  

• It wasn’t long before Suto’s brother noticed her growing interest in content creation. He knew she had a “natural ability to talk to people,” so he encouraged her to branch out into streaming.
  
  

• That suggestion changed everything: within six months of streaming on Twitch, Suto had made partner. She joined the roster of an esports team—Energy—soon after, and eventually began playing Fortnite.
  
  

• Then, one day, the creator decided to make a Fortnite-themed art piece live on stream. The response was immediate:

How it’s going: Combining those two passions has transformed Suto’s career. In addition to entertaining fans on Twitch (where she now reaches 130,000 followers), Suto is currently in the process of painting “gamer cars” for Honda, collaborating with Cooler Master, and working with Beacons.

What’s up next: The streamer is ready to take her art career to the next level. In addition to selling prints and creating one-of-a-kind art pieces, Suto says she “would love to design characters” and “do a concept for video games” like Final Fantasy XIV.

DATA • U.S. TOP 50 📊

U.S. Top 50: Can a viral marketplace keep the momentum going?

The charts: This month has turned out to be a stunning success for MaviGadget. The Shorts hub wrapped up the last full week of February with a substantial lead over its closest competitors.

• The catch: one of MaviGadget’s biggest rivals—MrBeast—only released one long-form video this month. Will our rankings shift if the Feastables founder goes back to uploading three viral hits per month? Only time will tell—but for now, meet this week’s most-viewed U.S. channels:

🥇 The incumbent (711.8M views): MaviGadget has topped our Global and U.S. Top 50 Charts for the last two weeks (and reached a milestone of 20 billion lifetime views in the process). The kicker: MaviGadget seized the lead despite having less than half as many lifetime views as this week’s two runner-ups.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 The family channel (495.7M views): MaviGadget isn’t the only channel making a repeat appearance in February’s weekly charts. The globe-trotting family behind Vlad and Niki followed suit by ranking in at #2 for the second week in a row.

• The channel’s titular kiddos are no strangers to viral success. More than 112 million subscribers tune into Vlad and Niki’s primary hub, where they’ve collected 86.1 billion lifetime views.

🍫 The candy man (418.1M views): MrBeast may have finished out February with only one long-form video, but the snack master still gave fans plenty to celebrate. The creator marked the reformulation of his signature chocolate bars by announcing a $10,000 customer giveaway in a short-form clip.

WATCH THIS 📺

Druski’s new YouTube-exclusive series is a testament to “music industry madness”

The series: Druski is taking on YouTube as the host of a brand-new reality series. The short-form comedian—who currently claims 7 million Instagram followers—will draw viewers into a whirlwind of “music industry madness” as he hunts for the next addition to his record label.

• The first episode of Coulda Been House dropped yesterday at 9 PM EST. Check it out here to find out why YouTube calls Druski’s new show a program fans “absolutely cannot miss.”

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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.