?? Don’t believe the hype

Issue #324

Welcome to our new look masthead for Creator Weekly. We’ve been going through a subtle re-brand at Click2View and a new look for Creator Weekly was in order. I hope you like it. Happy Thursday, Simon.

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YouTube hypes up creators

If you want to make it big as a creator on YouTube, 500,000 subscribers is the magic number. After that number, things really start moving in terms of growth and revenue. But also, things get kind of stuck. The more views a creator gets the more they are recommended, blocking creators with fewer subscribers. YouTube Hype is an attempt by the video platform to give smaller creators a bigger audience. Instead of just liking, audiences can Hype a video that’s been out less than seven days and the creator has less than 500,000 subscribers. These videos then climb the Hype Leaderboard which shows the top 100 Hyped videos. Essentially, fans provide the promotional push and YouTube provides a platform so up-and-coming creators aren’t overshadowed by the MrBeasts of this world.

Will other platforms believe the Hype?

If Hype works for YouTube you can expect other video and social media platforms to not be far behind. It’s part of the time honoured tradition of social media companies copying each other. Snapchat is the latest to jump to embrace this tradition with the release of Simple Snapchat. It combines Stories and Spotlight to create a feed that is awfully similar to TikTok’s. Social media is all about following trends, for both the audience and the platform. It creates an innovation loop where the big players can simply copy a new function to stay on top.

Unsurprisingly Snap embraces AI

Jumping on the AI bandwagon Snap announced it’s adding an AI video generation tool for creators. To be fair, they probably have no choice but to embrace AI. Snap AI Video will only be available for a few chosen creators at the moment and there’s no word on a wider release just yet. Interestingly, the platform will make it clear to the audience if a video was AI generated as they’ll all be watermarked. Snap are now slightly ahead of TikTok and Instagram who are yet to release AI text to video generators - they can’t be far behind though.

Cool Tools

I feel like cool tools shouldn't be 'everything is awesome'. I saw this AI-powered mic - AudioIn. A version of it is probably the future. Increasing amounts of raw recorded audio is already being treated to the AI studio experience. But I would shy away from the AI in the capture of the audio and go for the best recording you can get to give the tools more to work with. Second there's this audio pin which just records everything you hear. I also think this will also be the future, everything (seen and heard) will be captured and that selfie I got last week with Anthony Scaramucci would have been captured for me. But it's worth remembering there's a huge environmental cost to burning through all this AI processing time and recording everything all day long for many hundreds of millions to be able to simplify their social posting regime might be a bit wasteful.

Hot Tips

If you're crafting audio content, try mixing in some visuals. Create a DIY mixed media visualiser by projecting onto various surfaces. Meanwhile, web design is going maximalist with bold colours and layers. It seems while we're mixing media, they're maxing visuals. "More is more" might be the new creative mantra.

Viral Hits

The internet, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that this week's obsessions are a baby pygmy hippo named Moo Deng and IShowSpeed's livestream through Southeast Asia. We're not complaining, just observing the randomness of it all.

Stuff from us

It's inspiring to see more diverse voices shaping the future of finance. Our recent collaboration with Visa gave us a chance to showcase the talented women driving innovation at Visa Consulting & Analytics (VCA) . The video offers a glimpse into their work and the dynamic culture at VCA. Check it out if you're interested in the evolving world of fintech and the people behind it.

Happy Thursday

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This week’s newsletter was written by Tim Colman and Simon Kearney , and edited by Andre Howson . Gifs produced by Ahmad Hafiz .