The TikTok ban, Ryan’s World and YouTube Shorts monetization

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

0:38Today, we're diving into the remarkable story of Colin Rosenblum. Wow. Did you pay it to say that? That's crazy. That's very kind. It's crazy, but it's my favorite way to learn about a subject matter. I'm learning about so much more now that I can turn this research into like a seven minute podcast that I can listen to just when I'm walking. Did you tell it that I worked at the front desk of a hotel? Dude, the prompt is just make me a podcast about Colin from Colin and Samir. That's it. I may be biased, but I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm hooked. So if you guys haven't checked out Copilot, check it out.

1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Hey, podcast listeners. It's Samir. I'm recording this voice memo from Florence, Italy. I'm actually here for my brother's wedding, so I won't be on the show this week. And this month actually is going to be a little bit different here on the Colin and Samir show. And that's because Colin's also getting married at the end of this month. So we're going to be trying out some new things here on the podcast feed. And I also wanted to tell you about an experiment we are doing on YouTube.

1:48We're doing a new spin on our show, Creator Support. It's a separate channel. If you were listening to the show last year, then you're familiar with this format. But we're trying a different spin on it. We uploaded a behind-the-scenes video there. So if you want to check that out, that's live on YouTube now. Just go to Creator Support. All right. Colin's taking over this week on the show. So I hope you guys enjoy. Let's start with this. We do not intend to ban TikTok. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company sells the social media platform.

2:20We support that bill. We welcome that bill. We do not see it as a ban, right? We see it as a divestment. What it does in terms of allowing people to share information in a free way and a way that allows people to have discourse is very important. But we do have concerns. Hey, podcast listeners. This is Colin. We have a special edition of the Colin and Samir show today. And that's because we're joined by both writers from the published press. We have Nate back again. What's up? And we have Hannah. Hannah, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. So today on the show, we are going to cover three stories that we have covered in the past in our newsletter.

2:56We're going to be starting with the TikTok ban, if I can even call it a ban. That's kind of up for debate. But first, Hannah, what are you doing in LA? I'm sitting in Samir's seat because I'm visiting you guys from sunny Portland, Oregon. And I'm here to join Nate to go to the Informations Creator Summit. So both of you were at the Information Summit, which is a creator economy conference. They have a bunch of speakers. From my experience, largely a lot of actually VCs and creator companies that attend the summit. I'm curious from both of you, you were there yesterday. What was one thing that was interesting from the summit?

3:34Yeah, I saw Ty Haney speak and she is the founder of Outdoor Voices as a proud doing things hat and short owner. It was really exciting to hear from her and to hear her be really transparent about the fall of Outdoor Voices and how what she said was that personality is like a single point of failure and that happened to her. And even though she's not a pure play creator, I feel like that's really relatable for a lot of creators when building their businesses. So we covered that in the newsletter. We put that quote in there that personality was a point of failure. And what she means by that is that she became the personality for the brand of Outdoor Voices.

4:17And then when she was essentially ousted from the company, the brand no longer has that community leader. And so she was giving that as kind of like a warning to creators who are starting brands. to make sure that you're not overly attached to the brand. Yes. And that's the bet that she's taking with her new platform, TYB. It's all about creators and their communities and them working together to build a business. And that's what she thinks will be a strong foundation and a lasting creator company. Yeah. And I thought her point about in the early days of Outdoor Voices, their success was really from hiking clubs.

4:52It's just these really organic communities that they tied themselves to. And she brought up like looking around, you know, run clubs are becoming a huge thing. I know Venice Run Club, Colin, you ran in their mile race, did pretty well. I mean, Nate, now that you've brought it up, yes, I ran in a race with Venice Run Club and I ran a 616 mile. Pretty impressive. Thought I injured my lungs for the next three hours, but yeah, I finished 616. Breaking news, Colin is an athlete. I think that's what he wants you to know. That's what I want you to take away from this episode. So Nate, for you, what did you take away from the information summit?

5:27What were people talking about? Yeah, I think one quote that really stuck out to me was specializing allows you to charge what you're worth. This came from Duke Moore, who's a full-time accountant and finance creator known as at Duke Loves Taxes Online. I never heard of Duke before. I'd never seen any of his videos. So he's an accountant first and a finance creator second. And when he started posting TikToks that were taking off, he began receiving hundreds of DMs every day of people asking him for tax advice when tax season came around. And his accounting business didn't actually find solid footing, though, until he stopped trying to serve everyone and answer everyone's questions.

6:07And he instead specialized on creators with tax questions tied to their unique profession because he had a lot in common with them, a lot of empathy with them. So obviously it's very relevant because tax day is coming up. Do your taxes. But yeah, I thought that was a really unique quote. Specializing allows you to charge what you're worth that is applicable to so many different types of creators. I definitely think that's a good perspective, whether your business is advertising or you're selling directly to your audience like he is. It's important the more that you target your audience, the more that you know them really well, and it's a like-minded group of people, the more valuable that becomes to the right advertiser who really wants that specific group of people.

6:50So these two topics we actually covered on Wednesday, the day that we're recording right now, in the newsletter. And if you're unfamiliar with the way the newsletter works, in every send we cover three stories. Now that's essentially what we're going to get into right now. We're going to cover three stories similarly to how we actually do it in the newsletter. And the top story of this episode is the TikTok ban. This is something that we've dedicated four or five issues to in the last month and a half, really trying to track it and make sure people are up to speed with what's happening here. So we'll bring you up to speed, and then we're going to answer this question of, you know, how close are we to an actual TikTok ban?

7:33So Hannah, why don't you start us off and catch us up to speed a little bit with the TikTok ban as we reported on it first, March 13th? Let's first clarify what the bill actually is. So the bill that the House passed intends to force ByteDance to sell TikTok within six months, not ban it outright, though it will have to be banned in the US if it fails to do so within six months. So what we're talking about here is a divestment. Correct. Is that the right way to say that word, a divestment? Divestment is what I thought. Yeah, I thought it was divesting. Yeah. So a ban is potentially on the table, but the reality is the U.S.

8:14government is looking more so to have TikTok sold to a U.S. company. Yes. So a lot of people have thrown their hat in the ring to buy TikTok. And when it comes to President Biden, he has said that he would sign the bill if it were to pass his desk. Then shortly after, Vice President Kamala Harris came forward and said they might not sign it if it did come their way. I know President Trump has said he would not sign it. Because it would give too much power to meta, is what he's saying? I think it's all mixed up. I think the one thing that's worth clarifying, though, is that Kevin O 'Leary, Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank, has been a very vocal proponent of purchasing it himself.

8:51But a little-known fact is that he's actually Canadian. So, I don't know, the Canadians might be... Interesting. Yeah. Saying you want to buy TikTok just feels like marketing for yourself at this point. At one point, I believe the D 'Amelio family was trying to raise the funds to buy TikTok. Oh, goodness. Mark D 'Amelio, he's everywhere. Yeah, I think he was trying to buy it. So yeah, there's a lot of stories out there about it. I do think what's interesting when it comes to Biden is that he also has been posting on TikTok, or at least his campaign has been posting, because it is such an effective marketing tool, and 150 million or so Americans use it.

9:30So it's sort of this interesting thing where we have this looming potential ban or divestment, And yet even the government itself is using it and finds it to be valuable and perhaps has changed their tone a little bit on whether they would ban it or not. So Hannah, too, I know in terms of covering this whole ordeal with TikTok, you've actually spoken with some creators to get their point of view on potential sale, potential ban. What have they told you? Yeah, I spoke with V of Under the Desk News. She's a TikTok news creator. and she was very much in support of standing with TikTok and fighting against the ban.

10:10Not just because she is a TikTok creator, but she doesn't see it as a legitimate national security issue. She sees it as being against the constitution with the first amendment. And, you know, she told me that she will go down with the ship if it, if it leaves. And I commend her for just, you know, being fully on board with that. Meanwhile, Adam Face, who owns the short form media company Gymnasium, they have a bunch of shows on TikTok, on Instagram Reels. He said that him and his team were taking the TikTok ban very seriously, but that, you know, they would be okay if something did happen to it.

10:47You know, they would be okay posting just on Reels or YouTube shorts and just finding other short form media outlets that they could still be present. It was very much a diversification play. So where are we now in terms of this being an actual threat? Are we so far past the point of TikTok actually being banned? Because it feels to me like things have cooled off, right? Which is interesting because I think that's why this house bill feels like it came out of nowhere for a lot of people. Because I remember last year, I was living in D.C. at the time, and I took the train over to Capitol Hill when the noise was really getting louder.

11:26and TikTok was flying out creators to protest almost on Capitol Hill, talk about their small businesses and everything. And it doesn't feel like there's that same kind of momentum or like pushback almost in that way. It almost feels like people are just kind of ambivalent. I mean, bring up Adam Faze, right? And him talking about, you know, yeah, we're focused on diversifying. Like that's the name of the game. I know Duke's Taxes was talking about that at the information summit yesterday. He said, there's a lot of opportunities out there. We're not scared. You can't depend on one thing. Just in regards to talking about how the social media industry works in general, right?

12:05But at the same time, I think that ambivalence and that idea of people almost forgetting that a TikTok ban might happen. Pew Research actually put out a study today that said in fall 2023, support for a U.S. TikTok ban has declined. So around this time last year, March 2023, 50 % of U.S. adults said they would support the U.S. government banning TikTok versus now that number is at 38. So it's been interesting seeing that decline. And I wonder if it's just because it's been in the news a lot less until now. There's something interesting that I know we all read in Time Magazine today. The title is The House TikTok Ban is an Empty Threat.

12:49And I think some of the reason that people may be less in favor of the ban than maybe a year before has to do with information like this that has come out, and I'll read it to you. But it reads, The government must show that the ban furthers an important government interest unrelated to speech and does not burden significantly more speech than necessary to further that interest. To paraphrase the Supreme Court, Congress launches a missile to kill a mouse. It's possible that some TikTok user data has intelligence value to the Chinese Communist Party, but the overwhelming majority of TikTok users and videos pose absolutely no threat to national security.

13:28And it goes on to read, If TikTok is reasonably certain the ban is unconstitutional, it does not need to take the drastic step of divestiture to avoid it. So I think that some of it is that a lot of us Americans are on TikTok. We're posting, we're consuming. 170 million. 170 million? Yeah. So that's a lot of Americans who are on TikTok scrolling, probably looking at a lot of this content and having a hard time seeing how this is valuable data to the Chinese Communist Party. And of course, I'm sure there is data there and there are ways to use it for harm. But from a consumer standpoint, when we're looking at essentially memes and travel guides and cooking tutorials and everything that's on TikTok, our everyday experience with it is that it's giving us joy, it's making us laugh, it's connecting us with friends, and it's hard to sort of shift modes into, oh, this is a threat to national security.

14:23Yeah, and I know on March 27th, we wrote in the press how a group of bipartisan senators actually called to declassify TikTok-related briefings. They said that concerns raised by the intelligence community should be shared more broadly to better educate the public as to why TikTok poses a national security threat. Because I think to your point, the majority of people, the content they are watching, by no means, the two ideas of TikTok is dangerous to this thing I'm watching of a penguin dancing, you know, to the new Beyonce song, right? Like those ideas feel so far away. And I think also to your point, you know, in terms of people at TikTok itself, a friend's sister actually works at TikTok and they said the mindset has kind of just been like, just keep swimming in the sense of, you know, they've been dealing with talk of a TikTok band for four years now.

15:17And it's almost just like background chatter at this point. It's like, you have to ignore that in order to show up to your job and do your job every day. And I almost think there's a parallel between that and the average TikTok user, you know, in terms of my day-to-day is already so busy. I have so much, only so much I can think about, only so many, you know, political matters. Let's say I can get behind. Like, how much do I really want to think about getting rid of this thing that does bring me joy or information on the day to day? And meanwhile, they keep on rolling out new features. They just rolled out a new monetization feature that lets creators earn money from search results.

15:52And they have a TikTok youth council that they just announced that is between the ages of 15 and 18. These kids kind of informing them of like what is safe for the platform. so they keep on trucking along with all these new updates so TikTok and TikTokers are basically just Finding Nemo is what you're telling me it was a Finding Nemo reference I was going to assume the majority of the listenership they would get that and be a fun little Easter egg but thanks for putting it I caught the reference everybody I appreciate it moving on let's head to our second story Hannah, what's the second story?

16:33Our second story is on kids creator Ryan's World. He has over 36 million subscribers on YouTube. He came to fame making toy unboxing videos. And he's got a live action and cartoon movie in this film, Ryan's World, the movie. He's working with media studio Pocket Watch. And they're self-distributing the film. They're shopping it around to around 2 ,000 theaters. Okay. So for reference, Ryan is a 12-year-old. with 36 million subscribers and a long history already on YouTube. Samir and I have talked about them on the channel before. Kids YouTube is an incredible opportunity because there are a lot of children watching YouTube and they have the most available time to consume content.

17:18Not only that, I don't know if you have nieces and nephews, but my nieces and nephews, I'll sit with them. They'll watch the same video over and over and over and over again. They watch children's YouTube videos as if it's like your favorite song. So there is a lot of opportunity for people who make kids content on YouTube to get to viewership levels that are like unheard of, you know, in the hundreds of millions. So Ryan is a legend in that space and is now with his family and with his company, really the whole organization, launching this movie and trying to self-distribute. And really betting on his audience because Cocomelon is coming out with a movie with Universal.

18:02So I think it's a really interesting competition there to see who's going to get kind of more distribution through those two avenues. So one having the backing of a major studio and one going at it a little bit more independently reminds me of our friends at Yes Theory with their Project Iceman documentary and deciding to self-fund it to raise money from their audience and do a run through the theaters as well, but entirely independently. Yeah, I talked to Yes Theory's head of operations, Pedro Peva, and they partnered with Cinemark and they did a smaller run. They did around 200 theaters. But he was saying that self-distribution can be a narrative asset.

18:46He told me, if you find a way to do it and nobody let you in, that also strengthens the brand and even strengthens the story of the movie itself. I think that's really important. It's not only that creators are making feature-length movies, it's the story of getting the movie in theaters that people can kind of wrap their heads around. I think for fans of Ryan's World, it's a little bit of a different experience if they know it's independent. And, you know, of course, these are kids, but I would say if the parents of the kids are invested in Ryan's World and they know that, there's this element of like, oh, we actually want to come out to the theaters and support because it's not a big studio film.

19:25I even think if you look at Rocka Rocka with Talk To Me, right? Obviously, they produce that, distribute it with A24. But even though they've gotten to a point where they're post-platform, in a sense, they don't really regularly upload on YouTube, they were along the way telling the story of how they even got to the point where they could make Talk To Me on their YouTube channel and keeping their core audience they developed over 10 plus years engaged with the story. So I think that idea of telling the story behind the story is, it almost feels like so natural or ingrained to YouTube itself. You know, just keeping the community updated along the journey with you.

20:05I think making feature-length films, too, offers this really unique opportunity for the audience to have an event, to come out to something, to do something that is different than the regularly scheduled programming on YouTube that they'll really remember. and it's this unique opportunity to scale. You know, when you look at Yes Theory with Project Iceman, they're not the main character of the movie. Anders is, the guy who, putting himself through this incredible athletic feat of doing an Ironman in Antarctica. That's, in a way, scaling themselves because they're not the ones doing this Ironman in Antarctica.

20:41Now, with Ryan's World, it goes even a step further because right now it's live action and animated, but the next one could be fully animated. And that could open up the doors for years and years worth of films that are animated just like any other sort of Pixar movie or children's movie we're used to. And Ryan and his company now have this opportunity to build IP that can live on. and they've already done it because they do have animated channels but taking it a step further and bringing it into films if they find that this is successful could be a huge opportunity so that Ryan who's 12 years old right now I would imagine by the time he turns 15 and 16 he's not as interested in being Ryan from Ryan's World so this in my opinion is the big opportunity for the company to live far into the future is by slowly transitioning the brand into this animated version of him.

21:36This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40 % off. Terms apply. Yeah, another thing Pedro pointed out when we were chatting was just by virtue of being in a children's genre, you have this mass appeal and this group appeal from a theater of a mom who wants to give herself some peace for two hours and just entertain her children versus something like Project Iceman, where you might need to have some prior knowledge about it to really want to go see it.

22:29With a movie like Ryan's World, you recognize him from a YouTube channel and it just has mass appeal for any type of kid, no matter what background you have. So you're saying the plot is not as important here. Yes. It's more so the opportunity as a parent to take a break. I get it. Okay. Moving on, the final story. What do we got? Yeah. So we covered YouTube Shorts monetization. It turned one years old recently. and basically YouTube came out with a bunch of statistics just really catching us up to speed on how shorts monetization has played out with creators. I think the stat that stuck out the most was that 80 % of creators who joined the YouTube Partner Program through shorts eligibility now make money through other YouTube features.

23:16So think whether it's long-form advertising, memberships, or Brand Connect. One creator I spoke to who's a sports commentator, Andrew Fennishow, he connected his external merch store through YouTube shopping tool last August. And basically just by linking apparel links to his shorts, he's driven 5 million product impressions and 10 ,000 product clicks. And that's all passive. You know, that was something that really stuck out to him. He was very much like, I don't have to be screaming at my followers every day like, hey, I'm wearing this hat, go buy it, go buy it. It's just the YouTube shopping tool automatically linking that into all of his shorts.

23:52And for him as someone who works a full-time job, who only has so much time every day to work on videos and therefore chooses to focus on shorts, that kind of revenue stream, linking those products, that's a real difference maker. He had this quote, being able to monetize shorts has made this feel like a legitimate career path. And I thought that really stuck out. Yeah, I think that statistic around it being an on-ramp to other avenues of monetization is what's really important. And that's what Samir and I thought was the promise of shorts when it was introduced. You know, we were pretty confident that shorts monetization would never, of course, rival long form.

24:35But we thought that the interesting thing here is that it's this lower barrier to entry. And it's this offering that can either bring people who are pre-existing on TikTok or Reels over to YouTube for the first time, or it can bring, you know, early aspiring first-time creators. And you can become part of the YouTube Partner Program and start to become comfortable and learn about what it means to make actual money through making videos. And that's really impactful. The fact that you can come in the door through YouTube Shorts, you can become part of the YouTube Partner Program, and then you're just aware of this ecosystem, right?

25:09And you're like, let's start making long-form videos. Let's attach my shopping links here and start to grow as a creator. I think that's the big win for YouTube Shorts, the on-ramp aspect of it. not necessarily creators posting, wow, look how much money I made on shorts. That is not a huge reality. That's not something we're seeing every day. And we may never see that type of thing. I think we don't see that on TikTok. We don't see that on Reels. Short form content is just harder to monetize. Yeah, so since Samir's not here, Colin, I have to fill the obligatory role of mentioning LinkedIn. But I posted this story on LinkedIn and I got a comment that I found really interesting.

25:49And I'm curious to hear from you how this plays into how you and Samir approach shorts. So you're just plugging your LinkedIn is what's happening here. No, I actually thought this was a legitimately interesting comment. But someone wrote, I have no problem with shorts other than the time constraint. I feel people's best work is created without any restraints. But that said, restraints can make for an interesting challenge. So shrug emoji. Basically, what they're saying is by restraining your creativity to making up to 60 second short, it can actually allow you to not only forces you to make the thing, you know, you're able to make more things versus, let's say, getting stuck in the trap of working on a long form video that ends up taking you three or four months to produce.

26:33So the only problem this person has with shorts is the time restraint. But at the same time, it's the thing they like about shorts. Yes. Okay. All I have to say to that is, if you have a problem with the time constraint, luckily you're on YouTube and there are many ways to blow past that time constraint. But I agree that because of the length and because of the format, it does feel manageable. And there are windows of time that Samir and I have available where we are able to make a short. And we would not, of course, be able to make a long form piece of content. Right? We have more time available than if we were just going to post a tweet or an Instagram carousel.