YouTube's New Plan to Make Small Creators Famous | Creator Upload

0:01Welcome to Greater Upload, your Greater Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Oh, Josh. It is the last, I don't know if it's technically, but it's kind of the last week of summer. How are you feeling? I'm feeling a little bit, like, just a little bit nippy. It's a little bit chilly out. Okay. Okay. Seasons have changed in a little bit. Speaking of change, I went last night to my very first book club. I love that transition. Thank you. I love that transition, Lauren. Thank you so much. It's fantastic. It's just like new beginnings. My kid's already been in school for a little bit.

0:31And, you know, so I was invited to this book club and I was like, and they were like, oh, yeah, the next meeting is next week. This is like a week ago. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure. So I'll join the next time. And she's like, no, no, here's the book. You're going to read it. So I was tasked with reading a book in like less than a week. And listen, I've read a book before. Several, actually. I go through phases where like I won't read anything for six months and then I'll read like a bunch. And then like, but like every time I finished one, my husband's always like, wow, like he's he's like shocked.

1:00Like he's just like, you've actually. This is this is fascinating. Tell us more. Yeah, no, totally. I like having a lot of books around because then it looks like I'm smart. Anyway, I read this book in one day. It's called Broken Country. And I could not wait to talk about it. It's a Reese Book Club selection. I'm just saying it was it was fun. It was ladies. It was wine. It was cheese. There was a moderator like doing it. I mean, I feel like I'm just at a new level of like mom suburbia. Like I just feel really good about it. And I'm like into it. I'm like here for it. Were there definitely people that obviously didn't read the book?

1:35Yeah, there was one woman who said she did a chat. She'd be to summary like five minutes before. And she's like known in the group is like the one she's like, what will happen is she if she finds then the topic, like when we're discussing interesting, then she'll go and read it. That's her sort of thing thing. But pretty much everybody read it. like pretty much except for this one person you need like this base level of participation in order for to make exciting and i make it past i also thought it was is this gonna be like lame talking about a book but it was like kind of fun i mean it's like i you know josh it's like when you talk about a tv show but like you're talking about a book i was like it was fun same same bit different speaking of tv show i just gotta do a quick shout out to a show on netflix that i'm obsessed with right now it's an animated series called long story short which it might be the most jewish thing ever and i mean that in every positive way so calm down haters um it's hysterical paul riser plays the dad just to give you a sense it is so funny i think it's like from the creator of big mouth or one of the creators of big mouth or writers of big mouth or something like that it is so funny for like our generation it like goes back and forth like 1990 it's like a family it's like and it'll be like this happened in 1997 it'll be like 2002 and i mean it is so it is so funny i i I can't even I can't recommend it highly enough.

2:50So there's so much pop culture. I mean, between the summer, I turned pretty and Travis and Taylor getting engaged. I don't even know what else to talk about this week. And also, Lauren, like similar to your book club, my kids this weekend spent it on screens on Roblox because there was another huge pop culture event happening. Oh. So there's this developer beef that is this like faux animosity between two developers of top, top, top Roblox experiences. Sure. So there's this one experience that's grow a garden where you get to have different seeds and you grow gardens and they get bigger and bigger and you can have different mutations.

3:28Sure. And then there's this other game called Steal a Brain Rot, which is more specifically, you might have heard it be called Steal an Italian Brain Rot. It's actually called Steal a Brain Rot. I was just going to say, why is my eight year old talking about Italian brain rot right now? What is that? There you go. What is that about? He's not, as you know, like not on Roblox. Like, what does that mean? So brain rot. I know what brain rot is. It's called up to all the memes and everything else for Gen Alpha. And Italian brain rot is just an Italian spin on that. A like stereotypical Italian spin on that.

3:58So it's like, here I go. Yeah, exactly. Kind of. There's this character called Cappuccino Ballerina. Uh-huh. And there's other things that sound like vaguely Italian. Is this all living? Is Italian brainwrap all living on Roblox? No, it was a popular meme online. And now what's happening because these devs can move so quickly, they take these popular memes online, put it into a Roblox game, generally apply it to something that preexisted, like a game mechanic that preexisted. and then they're able to get a huge amount of people playing this because of the memification of it because it is in this gamified structure that was already working for something else.

4:37And so you'll see like Steal a Brain Rot now and there's all these different derivatives of Steal a Brain Rot but the original is still the biggest. And so they have this huge event this weekend. Generally every weekend at 10 a.m. ET on Saturdays because my kids tried the schedule for it. There's this kind of event where the admins will just start giving away free, big, exotic, rare gifts to everybody playing in the system at that time. And then there was this faux kind of rivalry that developed between the Grow a Garden developer and the Steal a Brain Rot developer. And they said that they were going to, for all the people that were playing the game, for like every million new concurrent players that were playing the game, they were going to donate a set amount of money to Mr.

5:20Beast and Mark Rober's Team Water Initiative. and this kind of like precipitated through i don't know how my kids find out about it honestly i think they have a friend that watches these people on youtube or watches sources that watch these people on youtube so they get the information from there and then and then it kind of precipitates around the third and fifth grade new jersey pop culture ecosystem so they were playing this weekend and so were a ton of other people roblox just set the record for the most amount of concurrent players at any given time on the platform at 47 million wow the closest to that before was steam steam had 40.5 million players once playing playing a game steam is another platform where you can go buy different online games and play them fortnite's concurrent player record was 15.3 million and that was during in november 2020 peak pandemic times and again this roblox record 47 million players there was upwards of 20 uh plus million playing each of these different individual games at any given time during the day and it just shows you like like it's not a bunch of millennials playing this it's not a bunch of i don't even think high schoolers playing this i I really think it's these like pre-adolescent kids that are playing these games.

6:47And what's fascinating here is how they were able to amass those amount of numbers from that demographic. Well, they don't generally have easy access to news sources where this is just disseminating like through their friends and stuff talking about it and maybe through YouTubers discussing it. I think it's fascinating. It's fascinating and kind of terrifying. As you know, I have kids that are not perpetually online, as it were, like some other people I know. And my kid was talking about Italian brain rot. He doesn't know what it means. And he was just saying that. And I was like, what is that?

7:22I heard him say it in passing. And I was like, you know. And it's also just terrifying because you basically have indicated like the perfect Petri dish for all these sexual predators to be like, here's a platform where all nine or 40 million nine to 12 year olds are on. And that's why there's a lot of lawsuits and Roblox needs to have even more protections in place for these very young children that are like amassing in huge numbers on the platform. Not to bring the party down, but it is true. 100 % yes I think they'll figure that part out you're so you're you're fake need to have to they have no choice they have to they're getting sued up the wazoo there was another one about a Denver family suing Roblox and Meta yesterday I think about a alleged role in sexual exploitation and grooming so obviously it's gross it's gross it's a travesty that it does happen I think these platforms need to figure out there's other platforms big platforms some of the biggest in the world a la YouTube that have had these controversies in the past that have implemented different safeguards to figure that moving forward, including not just around the apocalypse, but like banning comments on child videos, making it less easily accessible for children to access different parts of the platform, et cetera.

8:39I think there's a bunch of different kind of levers that Roblox will be able to implement or can currently push and pull in order to create a more safe environment for all of these millions of kids on the platform. In the meantime, it's just wild that they even get there in the first place. In the meantime, Italian brain rot is here to say. That's really bananas. Up next, the first big story, YouTube's hype machine has finally made its way to the U.S. So as a reminder, hype is a feature that was announced a few months ago, which is a feature, a new feature on YouTube that's going to highlight channels with fewer than 500 ,000 subscribers on their channel.

9:15which, you know, historically, you know, the YouTube, it's just so interesting, the evolution of all of this. And it relates actually a little bit to sort of VidCon. I was talking to somebody about VidCon the other day. When VidCon started, being a, not even a creator, it was called a YouTuber, kind of meant one thing. You were like vlogging from your bedroom, you're making sketches from your bedroom. So like, you could have one convention that kind of catered to those YouTubers and their fans. YouTube is, for many reasons, I think, lost its way in the last few years, but partly because, you know, YouTube is not one thing.

9:45Creators are not one thing. And YouTube top channels and trending used to literally just be one of the top channels on YouTube. And, you know, back in the day, that was... It wasn't even algorithmically derived. It used to be a human when it first launched that was deciding which channels would go on the homepage and in what order. But it was based largely on actual following and stuff like that. And that, at that time, was an indicator of, like, what all of YouTube was kind of into and watching. And now you've got like, you know, infinite categories, different types of creators. I mean, we had Jonathan Katzmosis on the other day, who's like this massive woodworking creator.

10:20And there's a huge just sort of cohort that's about that. There's knitters, everything. And then, of course, there's what you call kind of micro influencers, which like definitely fewer than 500 ,000. But they have potentially like a very kind of big influence. And then you have, you know, platforms like a TikTok where it's really much easier to be discovered. So it's I love. So as it relates to like a VidCon, because I just want to thread it back to that, it's like all of these other sort of conferences have popped up like OpenSauce and others that are like for specific niches that are having huge sort of success.

10:53and YouTube also, as a reflection of that, has to figure out what are their mini conferences on their sort of main trending top lists, all this sort of stuff. And ignoring these kind of creators that are under a certain number is a huge disservice to what's actually going on the platform. It also lets platforms like TikTok kind of come to the forefront because you can be discovered there. Whereas like in recent years, it's been much more difficult to be discovered on sort of YouTube. The sort of trajectory of a creator nowadays days is you kind of go on TikTok to be discovered and then you might branch out after that to go on other platforms once you have a following as opposed to what it used to be where like you start the beginning middle and end of your career or longevity is on YouTube so what's cool about the hype button it will appear on eligible channels next other creator friendly features like remix and thanks viewers can give hype to three videos per week and the upload that receives the most will show up in this sort of central leaderboard that can be found via the Explore tab.

11:50So I think this is, I don't know, I think this is awesome. And like just sort of, yes, it should be on the cover of No Dumb Magazine, but I just think it solves for so many things that are like very current in the creator ecosystem and how people are watching, what people are watching and how folks can sort of discover new channels. So some other just mechanics for this too is, Lauren, like you said, there's every user logged in user to YouTube gets three hypes per week. They'll be able to see the hype button below the video of channels that have less than 500 ,000 subscribers. And the amount of hype that the video gets when you click to give it hype depends on the quantity of subscribers that the channel has.

12:35So if the channel has way less subscribers and you hype it up, it might get like, I don't know, 3000 hype points. The channel has 400 ,000 subscribers and you hype it up, it might get 752 hype points. There's no, from what I can see, easily identifiable calculus that can get you to the number of hypes that you're giving any specific video, but they're ranking it in some type of algorithm like that. What I've seen too is if you go to the hype list, which is not that easy to find, honestly, but if you're on mobile, you can go to your homepage page you'll get your top tab bar where it says like all podcasts etc different types of videos to look at you click on the little compass which is the explore tab on mobile and then you click on hype you'll get there and then you can see the top 100 most hyped and you can break the top 100 down by gaming music anime vlog movies food travel sports beauty and animals i think what youtube will eventually do is roll out full lists for each of those categories.

13:36But what's interesting here too, is just seeing kind of like what's being hyped and what kind of effect it's having. So the number one hyped video on this list right now is this video called slander list. It says AI age verification just lost. We are fighting back exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. The channel has 11 ,000 subscribers. This video has 121 ,000 views. seems pretty good although it's not offering like this huge big astronomical boost like you would have gotten in the past from being on youtube's home page or being number one on trending or something like that right for instance the previous video on this slander list channel has 14 000 views one before that 17 000 views before that 58 000 views before that 180 000 views one from two weeks ago has 306 000 views so it's in line so like wait what is more popular of videos what did they get after they were listed so this current video again that's hyped is 121 000 that's sorry i missed that okay got it and so it's in line with kind of a more popular videos on that channel but it's not adding this astronomical boost right you also get this cool little bug that shows up below your video that says number one hype right like you get like a badging or like yes exactly um well and that's interesting like in terms of what you're saying is like what is the actual effect of this right like is this gonna you know is this gonna actually do what creators want it to do?

14:57And will this actually make a difference, material difference in their sort of trajectory and discovery? And if it doesn't, that's going to be a problem. YouTube has said too that in the past, you get three hypes for free right now. But in the future, you might be able to buy more hypes in order to hype up your favorite creators. Oh, like the viewer can buy the hypes. Yeah, okay. Correct. I don't know how I feel about that. It's an interesting gaming mechanic that I think is prevalent on all of these other social media platforms, like giving people virtual gifts and all of this stuff, that I feel like something has always just like bugged me about that a little bit.

15:31It just feels off. Like, I understand you want to show your support to these different creators. I think it's different if you're a channel member and you get different kinds of access, or if you're able to like pin a comment in the chat because you've donated a certain amount of money to a creator. That creator then has a higher percentage chance of seeing you, calling you out. That can be really exciting, I imagine. but just like giving these virtual goods i don't know i don't know how i feel about that we'll be able to see what the mechanic looks like and if they actually roll it out do you find that do you have an issue with like subscribing to a creator's patreon is that a problem no i think that's fine because you're getting some other type of content for it so i think there just has to be a proper value exchange here for youtube to feel like it's not just kind of like a cash grab like some of these other platforms i don't know people's got to make money you know what i mean they got to get discovered it's also interesting this is the first kind of like gaming mechanic that youtube's introduced to the platform or at least probably not outright i feel like i feel like if you think of it in terms of like something the user can do to actually influence immediately this other action on the platform yeah like you can like you can subscribe you can comment those are all types of gaming mechanics i guess if you want to zoom out or squint hard enough but this is the first one that's being introduced to the platform that has an actual cause and effect here that the user can see instantaneously.

16:51Yeah. Which also puts this now YouTube app more in line with, I mean, have you been on an app that's like originated in China, regardless of what it is, like Timu or Sheen, or also I have these lights, these LED lights, like LED Christmas lights that are in China. And so there's this Chinese app for it can control each individual light there's like gamification going on on that app it wants you like to win different prizes you're such a you're such a tool you're such a you're like you're like you're just a tool and they're like they just you're a pawn you're just like you're doing anything that they tell you to do man don't you see what they're doing to you they're gamifying everything in your life oh my god you're just so susceptible like i didn't i know but that's but But that's already prevalent and standard on other apps in other countries.

17:44I would think you would be more aware. I feel like you're just like, what? This is amazing. There's games for everything? I don't think it's amazing. I think it's interesting. And I have played them for a little bit before. I don't play them at all. Yeah, no, you definitely have. It's an educational experience. Yeah, no, sure. Intellectual enterprise. Oh, yeah. Market research. Why am I playing a fishing game on this Chinese app that controls my LED Christmas lights? I have no idea. But it's so prevalent. That's why I brought it up is because it's so prevalent in the ecosystem. I think this is the first time we've seen it on the world's largest video sharing site.

18:19It could lead to a lot more of this. I don't know. We'll see. It's obviously working for. I mean, I think this is mostly to me. This is mostly about anything. It's just obviously discovery and stuff. And this is like I'm into this. I really like this. I like this as a sort of reflection of what's going on in the larger ecosystem. I'm here for it. Next up, another big news with YouTube. So they've got a lot of big plans for this year's NFL season. And being the lady here, I'm going to pass it over to Josh to really describe what's going on. I don't know if you get to say that and then be upset when I interrupt you.

18:47Of course I do. Go on. So YouTube is doing a lot for this NFL season. On Friday, September 5th, they have the exclusive distribution rights for the kickoff game for the season, which is the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Los Angeles Chargers. That game is going to be live broadcast from Brazil. and it's going to air free to the world on YouTube's NFL channel. And it's going to be a more traditional broadcast, but yes, they are incorporating lots of creators like Destroying is going to provide some sideline commentary for the broadcast. Kat G, hugely popular musician, especially on YouTube, is going to be performing during the halftime show.

19:25And the broadcast itself is going to be led by commentary from Super Bowl winning quarterback Kurt Warner and longtime broadcaster Rich Eisen. But what's different about this, too, is that you're going to be able to watch it on not just the NFL's YouTube channel, but other creators' YouTube channels, too. YouTube has announced that there's going to be several of these alternative feeds available to watch the season's kickoff game. They'll be hosted by huge streamer iShowSpeed, comedian Tom Grossi, and then two Spanish-language YouTubers, Robert Grill and Scabechi. And they're going to be doing it with a watch with feature, which was announced in 2024, which is a feature that lets creators add real time commentary to live video.

20:06And obviously, initially, they always planned on targeting sports. I think it's an incredibly interesting rollout here that could have just consequences for distribution for ever forward. Because this kind of co-watching, co-streaming, co-viewing with your favorite fans has been prevalent on basically any platform that offers live streaming for the last couple of years. Also on television platforms too, like there's the Manning cast where Eli and Peyton Manning will watch a game with you and provide their own commentary if you don't want to hear it from the official broadcaster of that specific game.

20:44on Twitch people will do live commentary of the games all the time they've skirted around the rights issues by just like not having the sound on having the game actually off screen and the cameras pointed at the actual creators that are watching the game promoting the different commentary this happens on YouTube all the time too so one the innovation here is that it's official, I'm assuming that the four co-streamers here, co-broadcasters will have access to show the gameplay footage live as it's happening on the official NFL channel. And the second innovative thing about this here is that just it opens up a whole new distribution strategy for these big live events.

21:25Twitch has been doing this for a while. For big events that happen on Twitch, they have this co-streaming functionality where you can, let's say your Twitch rivals, which is a big internal Twitch production, or you're the video game awards. You can basically take your official stream, distribute it out to whatever other streamers you want. They show it on their stream. They get content for themselves and the numbers get aggregated automatically on Twitch's end into one big number. So you can have the numbers from the official stream and then the numbers from all these aggregate streams altogether.

21:57So what I'm guessing here is that YouTube is going to distribute these streams to these different platforms and then have one big number that's for how many people watched kind of concurrently and total on the official NFL stream. And then another number for everybody who watched across these five streams. And that number could have potential to be massive. And if you don't think every other type of big broadcast, whether it's sports, entertainment, fashion, music, whatever, is not going to replicate that model. And YouTube's not going to try to facilitate the replication of that model and give them the tools to do that i mean i i think you you're wrong because this is definitely a distribution path i mean more than a big way to try is this the is this proverbial you is this the royal you is this like me because like what what i i was specifically saying you probably don't believe this lauren well i hear it no i mean i think what's what's just getting i think that i think that this is it can't be understated how like NFL, right?

22:57Like, so NFL, basically live sports is basically the last kind of bastion, if that's the right use of that word of television. And in terms of people showing up, obviously, because it's live and people are actually like, you know, anticipating and don't know the results and that sort of stuff. And so it's essentially the most valuable properties on in terms of entertainment, in terms of television. And, and so as a result, like the idea that they are allowing for creators, especially to kind of essentially license, however they're figuring that out monetarily, this content to stream, to comment alongside it is the significance of that cannot be understated.

23:37This is the most valuable entertainment properties out there, like period, like full stop. I also think it's just interesting because cut to like five or so years ago, there was so much, I saw so many startups that were all about this like co-viewing, second screen kind of experience, like a lot of apps that were like, you know, they'll have the like even Facebook, like how to has a watch party feature where you can talk about things as you're watching it. And it's like everybody's trying to figure out what to do because they're like, everybody's on the phone when they're watching stuff. So like, how can we take advantage of the fact that they're on their phone?

24:10Like, we'll send them texts of there can buy the things that they're watching on the TV, like merch and stuff like that. And like, nothing's kind of really worked. And so I think it's going to be very interesting to see how people react to this. I think there's some people... It's also interesting. I saw something, I don't know, on the internet the other day about how, in terms of careers in the future for children, being an expert is not necessarily as important anymore. I would imagine that Kurt Warner and Rich Eisen have sort of a knowledge base of the NFL and football that Eyeshow Speed does not.

24:44I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that. Not to say he doesn't know a lot, but like, let's be real. These people know more. And at the end of the day, is that more important than the amount of followers that I show speed has? And yeah, I'm sure he's dedicated and loves the game and knows, knows enough to like be, you know, he's a huge fan, I'm sure. And he knows enough to like, you know, have get this gig. And so, you know, historically these, you know, football players, they retire and a lot of them become these kind of commentators and you can't do it without a huge following now. I mean, you know, it's just, and, you know, this is, people know this, but it's just like, it's not enough to be an expert anymore.

25:21And so I think this is a really big kind of, you know, example of where that is true. Totally. I also think what's going to be interesting here is the just like badge of honor that these creators are going to have because of the, what they've been chosen to co-stream. Yeah. And how that's going to go into their decks and how that's going to be a just marketing tool for them and monetizable tool for them in the future. I'm super stoked for this. I know. It's going to be interesting. All right, Josh, let's get to some uploads and downloads. I want to bring one up. Spotify is sliding into your DMs.

26:00And what is a shock to no one, Spotify has got a new feature, a messaging feature. So they have sort of officially kind of, I guess, declared themselves as like, people are saying this is their declaration as a social media platform. I mean, it is and it's not. It's like an ability to like share your favorite songs within the app, which is actually like a much kind of more seamless experience if you don't want to like quickly play something on Spotify. But it's, you know, it is just yet another messaging platform. And like, you know, historically, when these things happen, then you sort of figure out what activity is going on there.

26:31And then you build out from there, which could mean like a bigger sort of step in the social media kind of direction. So it's not insignificant. One of my favorite, you know, things, as people know, is like seemingly sort of small product changes that lead to like really huge changes in user behavior. So I'm very interested to see how this kind of unfolds and how people use the messaging on Spotify. Just makes sense. I wonder why they haven't done this earlier. Like you're sharing music with people. People love to share music with people. Why would Spotify happen off platform? I know. Well, because I mean, like it's a new it's a whole new feature set, right?

27:02So you've got to prioritize what you're building in these platforms and you know and then you've got to also figure out what you're how you're policing it or not policing it and then you're it might be easier just to like which they have partnerships with like all like sort of major apps they don't necessarily want to compete with them and so it's there's a lot of things to consider it's not necessarily like oh is this so hard to build it's just like you can't build it and then like walk away one can but then that's going to be a really shitty experience and so you have to just be really i mean there's a lot of really you know talking about kids and production protections and stuff.

27:32There's a lot of things you really have to think about. And also, since it's not a social media platform, I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure you can be whatever age to join beyond Spotify. So it's also like, okay, these are going to be kids accounts and this and that. So like, it's like, this is like, this is like when I, this is like, this is when I joined Facebook 100 years ago. And I remember when I wasn't in obviously a technical role, and you had to go to orientation, and they teach you about how to file a task. Like if something breaks on the platform, you as an employee, no matter who you are, you could literally file, you can file a task.

28:02And at that time, and I'm sure this is not the case, you could literally make it such an extreme sort of breakage in the app that it would go directly to Mark. Like there was like a thing, it's like, never press, never press this button. Because when you do, this is going directly to Mark's desk, like literally. And so I remember sitting there being like, Facebook, why would I ever do this? Like, does Facebook even like, this is so weird, like because I was just a user up until that point. That shit breaks all the time. You know, there's there's so I mean, all the time. And so like same with this.