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- The Pragmatic Era of the creator economy • Threads pulls in more creators • 2024 predictions season, and the hottest takes
The Pragmatic Era of the creator economy • Threads pulls in more creators • 2024 predictions season, and the hottest takes
Konstantin Kanin
November 02, 2023
Hi! 👋 This is the 4th edition of my newsletter and I'm so happy and grateful to have over 200 of you reading it!
There's so much going on in the creator space, but today I want to focus on the most interesting takes on the current state of the industry and its failed predictions, then talk about Threads creators, and give you the hottest takes that I've discovered last week.
Now let's dive into it!
→ The pragmatic era of the creator economy 📈📉🤔
This term, which I picked up from Chris Erwin's newsletter, who is the founder of RockWater, perfectly describes what’s been happening the last few weeks (or even months) in our industry.
In his precise analysis, Chris distilled what happened to Faze Clan which was acquired by GameSquare recently, the closure of beauty live shopping platform Supergreat and the departure of their employees to Whatnot.
Meanwhile, Kaya Yurieff reports that there’s been eleven (!) acquisitions of creator-focused startups in October alone.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kayayurieff_fire-sale-prices-for-creator-economy-startups-activity-7125116903508840450-4Miy/
And Avi Gandhi, the author of Creator Logic, points out the unfortunate outcome for creators, that is often overlooked by the industry — creators actually lose the source of income they were counting on when all these startups lured them in...
The feeling that something like this was coming had been in the air for a long time. Actually, mergers & acquisitions was the top-2 most mentioned prediction among creator economy execs for 2023.
And it might seem that we are doomed and the creator economy is in decline. However, industry experts, including founders and creators themselves, believe otherwise.
Jack Raines (Young Money newsletter), accurately points out that there are actually plenty of tools to help you become a successful creator. In his case it’s: (1) a laptop, (2) social media for discoverability, and (3) beehiiv subscription for a total cost of $99/month.
Sid Yadav, CEO & Co-founder at Circle, describes the sad outcome of many vc-backed creator economy startups:
These teams blew their venture dollars on expensive parties, PR "collabs", pool houses, and side projects instead of using it to build a real business.
But another big factor in the decline of a lot of startups is that it seems many of them haven't fully figured out their target audience – creators.
I liked this comment from Jim Louderback, the editor of Inside the Creator Economy:
VCs and founders thought creators could be modelled just like any other large B2B customer base. But that's clearly not true, as creation is a different process from, say, taxi driving, or accounting.
Just as a social network eventually dies if we exclude "social" from it, if the creator economy starts ignoring the creators themselves, the economy stops adding up.
→ Hot takes 😈
Todd Beaupré, Youtube’s product lead:
Shorts cannibalizing views from long-form content is not a big deal. (tweet)
Phil Ranta, COO at We Are Verified:
Ad blockers are good for creators. (post)
Jay Alto, creator & video editor:
Youtube should remove the view count on the home page. (video)
Nicholas Hensel, founder & CEO at Pickle:
Earned Media Value (EMV) is a BS metric for influencer marketing campaigns. (post)
Thoughts? 😏
→ Brace yourselves, predictions season is coming 🔮
Lia Haberman, the author of ICYMI newsletter, is doing a poll on what platforms, content formats, conferences and AI tools creator economy and marketing folks are prioritizing for Q1 2024. The questions are so good, I'm looking forward to seeing the results. Take a part!
Yep, it’s time for 2024 predictions & trends. And Brendan Gahan, using the examples of the "success" of BeReal, Lemon8, the rise of Web3, "Instagram killers", and the "death" of X/Twitter, reminds us that even though we all love predictions, no one actually knows anything.
Speaking of failing predictions...
→ Threads is actually thriving 🧵
Well, I can't wait to see what will industry say about Threads, which many of us believed was already dead in July but somehow managed to grow and get more creators and authors in.
Among those who I follow, Matt Navarra (Geekout Newsletter) after posting more than 150,000 tweets has ended his Twitter era and started posting more on Threads; Benedict Evans, who's been active on Twitter since 2007, has completely left it for Threads; and even Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day), a devoted Twitter user, who's been super sceptical about Threads all this time, agreed yesterday, that Twitter/X is finally over, as it has just entered its 9GAG era.
What can I say? We love to see it.
Alright, thanks for reading! ❤️
If you enjoyed it, I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.
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