Who Dominated YouTube and TikTok in 2023, Plus 2024 Trends from TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest

This Week: It’s basically the end of December and here’s what you need to know.? This issue is sponsored by my friends at Uscreen!

99 Shades of Beast in 2023:? YouTube releases its 2023 Trending Topics report, giving us a snapshot of life on Big Red.? My main takeaway – if Mr. Beast and DaFuq!?Boom! ever did a collab on Minecraft the internet would break.? Here are a few highlights:

• Skibidi Toilet ruled as the biggest trending topic, and its creator was among the top 10 breakout stars?– although I STILL keep introducing others to this weird slice of internet life.??
• Frenetic fast-paced channels were clearly the biggest growth driver as 7 of the top 10 fastest growing channels were either Mr. Beast or Mr. Beast inspired.? Two Shorts creators and a Roblox storyteller rounded out the list.
• Minecraft still dominates, as most of the rising stars were inspired by the open canvas game.

TikTok’s 2023 Recap Leans into Culture, Creatures and Music:? Double T took a different approach, instead providing “a window into stories that have inspired, entertained and educated”.? The selected videos offer a more curated view into how TikTok wants to present itself, which includes cute (big) cats, dogs, frogs, how to videos, top celebs, musicians and more.? It’s a far cry from what most users’ FYP page truly represents, and thus not useful as predictor or descriptor.? Also, Barbie and Swifties ruled.? But you knew that already.

• Related – TikTok also rolled out its 2024 “What’s Next” report, summarizing how it hopes we perceive them next year.? Download the full report for details.

Pinterest Predicts!? I always love the annual Pinterest Predicts round-up and this year’s crop entertains and informs too.? I’m looking forward to a “Jazz Revival” (check out a Kissa in Japan), “Blue Beauty” (quick tip, blue jeans never go out of style).? They also predict that badminton will take a run at pickleball (but no mention of padel).? And Jellysmack will love the upcoming “Be Jelly” trend.? But I’ll probably stay away from “Melty Mashups” and “Eclectic Grandpa”.? Discover all 23 here – and don’t miss the link to the PDF if you want a quick skim.

Threads Launches Tags:? Now with less hash!? You can now organize and join like-minded groups with the new tags function in Threads.? Unlike common hashtag spam, messages can only have one tag – and tags can be either single words or phrases.? Brian Solis likens it to Google+ Circles, which makes sense. ? Check out “Tech Threads” for an example (and like my post and click through on blue for more).? I also just started the “Creator Threads” for creator economy discussions.? It’s interesting to see these self-organizing groups begin to aggregate.? Might be a flash-in-the-pan but could be the next big thing for the upstart Twitter competitor.

• Related, Instagram rolls out “key findings” from its 2024 trend report too, but unclear if this is just for the US, as there’s a separate India report and presumably ones for Brazil, South Korea and the UK.? Also frustratingly, I can’t find the report – just those top-line “findings”.? Which means no public methodology for the “quantitative survey of ~5,000 Gen Z respondents across India, Brazil, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States.”? And without a methodology, there’s no way we can trust the numbers.
• Related, Meta owned Giphy for a hot minute, right?? Did we really need their top 5 Gif report too?? I guess we had no choice.

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CORRECTION: Last week I mistakenly included YouTube in the list of companies summoned to testify in front of the Senate over kids' safety.? A reader who spearheaded kids' safety at YouTube set me right.??

QUIBIS: ???

YOUTUBE

• Now you can pause comments on your YouTube videos.
• YouTube proudly celebrates mashup of marketing, glitz and T&A as the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer sets a new 24-hour view record.? So much for substance.
• Helping Google podcast creators migrate to YouTube.
• Top takeaways from the Google anti-trust trial.

META

• Thirsty Thursday Threads Thrusts into the EU this week.
• Feature-apalooza continues at Meta, as its AI tools add a boatload of new capabilities.

TIKTOK

• TikTok resurrects it’s “Swipe Out Hate” campaign – but this time to focus more on antisemitism along with other hate speech ($).
• The US Congress plans to focus on TikTok regulation in 2024, according to Senator Maria Cantwell.
• Great to see V Pappas emerge as the latest member of Simon & Schuster’s board!

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• Hank Green shares his monthly RPM numbers from Shorts, Reels and TikTok.? A paltry ten cents for a thousand views at best – and under $.05 for Reels.
• Some in Hollywood think the time is right for a creator union.
• Jon Youshaei and Thinkific create an accelerator program to help creators go full-time.
• Jamie Bolding , Jungle Creations founder, just raised ￡550k for a new startup, PackChat - leaning into the loneliness and isolation pandemic.
• Snap’s subscription tier nets an impressive $20M in November – after the Apple Tax.
• Congrats to Ironmouse for winning creator of the year at the Game Awards.
• Don’t equate Spotify with podcasting. The former lost billions, but the latter is still going strong.
• Congrats to my pal Paula Kaplan and her client for producing Apple’s top podcast of the year!
• Ruminations on plagiarism, James Somerton (Hbomberguy) and AI.
• Twitch shuts down its Korea operations.? Garbage Day explains – and concludes that Twitch sucks.
• Internet Archive hosting virtual event in January celebrating Steamboat Willie and other new IP entering the public domain in 2024.

GENERATIVE AI

• Google’s new Gemini AI model is pretty cool – but they still shouldn’t have faked one of the demos.
• Related: We’re one step closer to a personal LLM running on your tablet, phone or notebook.? And the Nano version of Google’s Gemini will run on the Pixel 8 Pro.
• Cher comes to Roblox.? Excited to chat with her development partners at NAB’s Creator Lab in April.
• Google Deepmind creates the AI version of an infinite number of monkeys – and extracts actual training data from ChatGPT.
• Animate Anyone shows off its AI deep-fake tech.? Not perfect but it pushes the state of the art.
• Stratechery predicts a world where the internet delivers AI generated content tailored to each of us and hopes it leads to abandonment.
• Related: Sports Illustrated created an AI author and then had him write product reviews.
• Now you can get a tax loss from your loser NFT collection.? Note, mine are still for sale, under $20, and get you free drinks at my meetups until 2027.
• Musicians can now play free concerts in Fortnite with new “Fortnite Festival. But when will we see “Fortnite Standup Comedy”?
• Also, Lego comes to Fortnite.? Related, an 18-year-old told me yesterday that he “used to play a lot of Fortnite back when it was a thing”.

TIPS

• The Editing Podcast explores how to edit your YouTube videos so they look good on TV (HT Publish Press).
• Kajabi’s “Prompt Playbook” for AI works on its AMA chatbot and other LLM’s too.??

Thanks for reading Inside the Creator Economy this year!? We’ve almost doubled in the last year and hope to do even more fun stuff in 2024!? Next week, expect a little wrap up and some predictions – and then I’ll be taking the last week of 2023 off.? And don't miss a meetup in 2023, we are kicking off in Dubai the second week of January and Las Vegas the week after.

• Let’s do a meetup in your town – anywhere in the US or even around the world.

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I've built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies - including Discovery and Paramount. Subscribe here on LinkedIn to get this newsletter every Monday.