Finally, the Truth About YouTube and TikTok Conversion, that’s “Professor Beast” To You, and Nike Does it Again – With a Swoosh!

11-21-2022: Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers and for those of you in Asia, you don’t want to miss Creator World, this Thursday – Sunday in Singapore! We’ve got fireside chats and workshops from Meta, TikTok, YouTube and many others (I’m even doing one on how to grow on LinkedIn). Plus, top creators including Bhuvan Bam, Dharni, Isha Borah and Lyqa Maravilla.? I’m flying to Singapore as I write this and can’t wait to see you all. Also join me tomorrow, Tuesday, for an “Inside the Creator Economy” meetup at “Ice Cold Beer” in Orchard between 5:30 and 7. I’ll be giving away two free tickets to Creator World and some of our speakers are likely to show up too!

Finally, the Truth About TikTok and YouTube Conversion: Does TikTok drive sales, or is it just an awareness engine? What about YouTube and Instagram? According to a new directional study from Gen.Video TikTok helps with awareness of more expensive brands (for example mobile phones), but really only converts impulse buys (like CPG). YouTube is where those pricier brands convert. If there’s a consideration phase it probably won’t convert on TikTok or Instagram.? The study also shows that 10-100k followers offer the sweet spot for TikTok impulse conversion, while it’s 10-100k on Instagram and 500k-1M for YouTube. Caveats: it’s just their data and a very non-projectible set of US consumers surveyed (225). But it not only makes sense, it fits the data we’ve observed.

Nike’s Debuts the Future of Digital Collectibles: The unfortunately named “Dot Swoosh” – aka www.swoosh.nike - hides the future of the digital collectibles formerly known as NFTs. The metaverse and storefront looks great and shows that when you hide the crypto mumbo-jumbo you can deliver stuff consumers really want. Another one to watch – Virtualness. The new NFT for Creators startup announced $8M in seed and is open for business (disclosure, I’m an advisor). And YouNow founder Adi Sideman launches a social network/game around collectible images called Revel and partners with Stable Diffusion parent Stable AI. Even with the DeFi house burning down, great to see innovative crypto use-cases for creators still launching. Just don’t call them NFTs!

Mr Beast Partners Goes Back to School: The Creator Economy is creating jobs across the production, marketing and operations spectrum. Yes, we’ve got a LOT of film schools, but a dearth of universities are training students to work in community-first media. Props to Jimmy Donaldson for partnering with his local University to change that.?

QUIBIS:?

• Death of Social? Read Troy Young ’s insightful piece about balancing between old social media and what’s coming next.
• New livestream shopping alternatives launched last week – PinterestTV, and a YouTube CreatorThon. I wonder who’s buying?
• More on shopping – YouTube adds shopping features to Shorts
• TikTok rolling out “Shops” in the US – just in time for the holidays.
• It’s “Creator vs. Premium” as a Google exec says YouTube’s $50M paid out to creators was a better investment than Netflix’s similar spend on “TV” content.
• AI-based video localization takes a big step forward as CNN adopts Papercup to create Spanish versions of its news reports.
• Balderton partner releases a comprehensive Creator Economy opus. Part 1 on Why We Should Care and Part 2 on Opportunities and Challenges. Worth reading to know what venture firms are thinking.
• Another big study to digest – Hootsuite’s annual “Social Media Trends” report is now out for 2023.
• Even more end of year wrap-up/looking forward stuff as TikTok releases its “Discover List” highlighting 50 creators you should know.
• LinkedIn boosts its brand safety tools with a new “hub” for advertisers.
• Related – TikTok ups its audience insight game for advertisers as well.
• My thoughts on the NYT’s breathless story about how TikTok is “beating tech’s slump ($)” even though it cut revenue forecast by 16%.?
• Dogs and cats living together (and worse). That’s what will happen if this new Facebook feature makes it into production.
• TubeBuddy co-founder Phil Starkovich hacked up some tools for tweeps to ease them into life after Twitter.?
• More than 2 dozen Meta employees fired/reprimanded for hijacking user accounts .

CRYPTIS:?

• VR needs to learn from events to deliver great experiences.
• Yes, the meltdown is in full swing. I’ll probably have something else to talk about next week. Until then, more details on SBF’s rise and fall.

GENIES:

• The GPT-4 Hype Train is rolling down the track – I wonder if Casey Jones is driving?
• The geeks at a16z say generative AI will replace artists long before developers have to worry.
• Cool tools: Descript launches storyboard video editor, competitor Runway launches new subtitles, captions and audio fix-up tools.?
• Fun site “This house does not exist” depicts AI-generated fantasy real-estate – a great Thanksgiving conversation starter.
• Google continues to tease us with its generative video efforts – if only they’d release something.

Tip of the Week: Simon Owens just published 13 creator growth hacks across two newsletters. His creators are podcasters, newsletter authors and web sites – but many of the tips are applicable to all creators. 8 in part 1 and another 5 in part 2.

What I’m Watching:?The wifi’s too darn slow on this plane to Singapore. I’m watching nothing.

See you around the internet, and feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up?and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here! And don't forget to listen to The Creator Feed - the weekly podcast Renee Teeley and I produce - get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher!