It’s Thursday and Twitch is cracking down on content focused on “intimate body parts” in the wake of several derrière-centric gaming streams.

RELEASE NOTES

YouTube’s new Chief Product Officer has some notes for creators and viewers

The CPO: Johanna Voolich is giving creators an inside look at YouTube’s next steps. The 19-year Google vet—who took on the role of YouTube Chief Product Officer seven months ago—introduced herself to viewers on Tuesday by co-hosting the first episode of a new Creator Insider series.

The show: Release Notes appears to be YouTube’s take on Patch Notes, the podcast Twitch uses to update users on recent developments. Voolich kicked off the series premiere by discussing YouTube’s recent moves and future plans with co-host and Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie.

• While Voolich touched on meetings with top creators like MrBeast and Alan Chikin Chow, AI took center stage in Episode One. The CPO noted that YouTube already uses “Invisible AI” systems to inform recommendation algorithms and safety policies. Its next goal is to introduce new “Visible AI” innovations, including the translation tool Aloud and the background generator Dream Screen.

The big picture: In an accompanying blog post, Ritchie outlined YouTube’s “4 big areas of focus” for 2024: empowering creators through AI, helping creators gain recognition as “next-generation studios,” “powering TV,” and building safety tools.

• Those priorities signify multiple turning points in the creator economy. As streaming continues to surpass traditional television, creators are increasingly adapting their content to OTT, FAST channels, and other TV-centric mediums. According to YouTube CEO Neil Mohan, YouTube alone now averages 1 billion hours of daily watch time on TVs.
  
  

• The rise of AI has been even more dramatic, as well as causing both anxiety and excitement for many creators. In the first episode of Release Notes, Voolich assured viewers that YouTube plans to use AI as a resource for “supercharging creators’ original voices”—not overshadowing them.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• The Slate show Slow Burn: Becoming Justice Thomas took home the top honor at this year’s podcasting-focused Ambie Awards. (Tubefilter)
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• TikTok has established a Global Youth Council to raise awareness of teen-facing resources and other safety-focused initiatives. (Tubefilter)
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• According to a report from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), “extreme anti-trans hate content remains widespread” on Meta-owned platforms like Facebook. (Engadget)
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• A new Google Search feature allows shoppers to swipe right or left on images of clothes to receive personalized “style recommendations.” (TechCrunch)

COLUMNS • STREAMERS ON THE RISE 📈

This IRL music streamer writes dozens of songs on the fly

How it started: ARIatHome knew he wanted to pursue music, but one thing kept getting in his way: “decision paralysis.” Despite his love of songwriting, the creator often found himself “putting 30 or 40 hours into a song and feel miserable and exhausted through the process.”

• So, he decided to shake things up. Instead of agonizing over every verse and hook, Ari began improvising live on Twitch. He spent hours making up “as many songs as fast as possible,” often taking suggestions and audio samples from chat.
  
  

• That change of pace was exactly what Ari needed. He started streaming for eight hours at a time and “making 30 or 35 songs back to back.” It wasn’t long before he took a break from college to stream full-time—a decision his musical family was 100% on board with.

How it’s going: Ari isn’t at home nearly as often these days. He now defines himself as an “IRL music streamer” and frequently takes his show on the road with the help of a handy streaming backpack:

What’s up next: That innovative approach to songwriting and musical performance has earned Ari a devoted audience of nearly 100,000 Twitch followers (including his dad, who enjoys “roasting” him via chat).

• The creator intends to continue entertaining those viewers by doing “crazier shit with this backpack” and coming up with “more, weirder stuff.” TikTok is on his agenda, too—meaning fans have plenty to look forward to in 2024.

DATA • U.S. TOP 50 📊

U.S. Top 50: These Shorts-savvy siblings are always up for a challenge

The creators: Whether they’re partnering with Chipotle or facing criminal charges for pranks-gone-wrong, the Stokes Twins always keep fans on the edges of their seats. The identical siblings have earned more than six billion YouTube views over the last six years thanks to their daring challenges, long-form experiments, and myth-busting Shorts.

• That success has a lot to do with The Stokes Twins’ flair for drama—and their ability to identify viral trends. The brothers routinely draw in tens of millions of views per video by answering high-stakes questions like “Can a Car Window Chop Off Your Finger?” Each of the creators’ top five Shorts, for instance, lay claim to at least 130 million views.

The stats: The Stokes Twins’ knack for building suspense has earned them a dedicated fanbase of nearly 34 million YouTube subscribers—6.8 million of which flooded in over the past 28 days alone. Unsurprisingly, all those new subscribers have triggered a massive influx of views.

• During the third full week of March, the Stokes Twins’ channel brought in a whopping 250.9 million views.
  
  

• That impressive total rocketed the siblings to 9th place in our weekly U.S. Top 50 chart.
  
  

• The result: the Stokes Twins’ have already earned 6x more views in March than they did in February.

FYI: This overview is just a sneak peek at our U.S. YouTube rankings, which track the fifty most-viewed channels of the week. Check out the latest chart here.

WATCH THIS 📺

The TikTokification of LinkedIn has begun

The feed: On Tuesday, McKinney strategy director Austin Null shared an unexpected discovery: a new LinkedIn beta feature that allows users to scroll through a feed of short-form videos.

• The platform confirmed the test to TechCrunch on Wednesday, but noted that it’s still in the early testing phase. If a video feed does comes to fruition, its implementation could be good news for LinkedIn influencers.
  
  

• The site’s creator community has grown rapidly over the past few years—enough to inspire the launch of a LinkedIn influencer marketing company earlier this month.
  
  

• Check out Null’s post here to see a clip of LinkedIn’s newfangled feed.

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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.