If You Own the Clock You Can Tell Any Time You Want — Plus More NFT Hype!

Here’s what’s new and what caught my eye this week:

Clubhouse Says "No Treats For the Dogcow": The buzzy audio platform has added a sort of virtual tip jar so creators can get paid. Great news, but what’s really cool is that creators get 100% of every payment (after those pesky credit card processing fees). This is GREAT for creators and also a big “FU” to Apple. Turns out that if CH took even a single digital dime, then Apple would demand its 30% tithe (Apple Store TOS). So, rather than screw creators to feed the dogcow, they did the right thing for creators. Mute-on/mute-off (x10) to CH!

OMG, Patreon Now a Quadricorn: Yes, I made that word up. But, with a valuation of 4 BILLION dollars, the creator economy pioneer continues to rake in the money. Congrats to Jack and the entire team in what’s both a win for creators and a vote of confidence in the creator-first economy. 

YouTube's Crazy New View Metric: Imagine you just invented a killer KPI. Call it “Productive Brain Time (PBT)”. Then, you made up a measurement metric. Call it “Hours Per Day where I thought about work (HPD)”. And, you decided to measure PBT by dividing HPD by daily non-sleeping hours. And THEN (because you think about work all the time) you told your boss you were performing at peak HPD, thus delivering an epic 100% PBT. Promotions and raises all around! That’s sort of like what YouTube is doing with "Violative View Rate" — inventing a KPI and then owning the measurement yardstick. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a step in the right direction and I applaud them. But, if you own the clock, you can tell any time you want. 

Everything You Always Wanted to Know (but Were Afraid to Ask) About NFTs: You’re probably overwhelmed by all the NFT hype. I know I am. But, if you want a deep, dive check out A16z’s encyclopedic roundup of articles, explainers, and much more. From a different point of view, the co-creator of NFTs, Anil Dash, ruminates about how the dream turned to ashes. From a negative and contrarian point of view, my friend Daniel Gould thinks it’s all a ripoff (scroll down past the YC stuff). And, if you’d rather listen to expert advice than read War and Peace, join us Tuesday at 12 PM (PT) for a live roundtable with two non-fungible brainiacs and me. We’ll talk about the creator opportunity with NFTs, unpack the dangers and hidden pitfalls, and explore where this exciting — yet controversial — crypto-development is headed. Live and free at live.vidcon.com. 

Tip of the Week: Another excerpt from Derral Eves's great new book detailing The YouTube Formula:

“If you want your YouTube videos to get discovered in a sea of millions, keep this thought at the forefront: make data-driven decisions, but always optimize for humans. You have to become a YouTube analytics pro, whether you like it or not. But, this doesn’t mean you turn into a robot or create content for a robot. Your YouTube success hinges on you maintaining the human element. The AI looks at patterns for people, so when you create content for people instead of for robots, everybody wins.”

QUIBIS:

• Pinterest doubles down on creators with $500,000 fund
• The mad men are coming! TikTok builds content accelerator with IPG/Mediabrands
• Seven trends that lead to Bitclout
• Rex Woodbury explains the rationale behind his investment in Creative Juice (investing directly in creators)
• MrBeast signs with Jellysmack — a no-brainer for both of them!

What We’re Watching: Colin and Samir dish on BitClout. The Mocap puppet taking over Twitch (scroll to 3:55 to see how it’s done). King Science — one of my fav new TikTokers. 

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 here!