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TOGETHER WITH |
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It's Friday and GameStop's stock jumped 40% after the guy who sent it "to the moon" in 2021 announced his plans to stream on YouTube today. |
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MRBEAST'S NEW MAN |
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Big changes are coming to Beast Industries |
The new hire: MrBeast has brought in Jeffrey Housenbold, a longtime tech investor and executive best known for his work on SoftBank's Vision Fund, as President and COO of Beast Industries. |
"Beast Industries" appears to be the newly debuted catch-all name for the company that serves as support for all of MrBeast's ventures, including his ever-growing YouTube presence (in case you missed it, he beat T-Series to become the most followed YouTube channel in the world) and things like Feastables and his upcoming Amazon reality show.
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Housenbold has invested and served on the boards of dozens of companies and was a Founding Managing Partner of SoftBank's $130 billion Vision Fund. With Beast Industries, he plans to "build an extraordinary media and consumer product & services company that has a positive impact on the world," he said in a LinkedIn post. |
"At Beast Industries, we believe in the transformative power of digital media and its potential to entertain, educate, and effect positive change. Our commitment to innovation, creativity, and philanthropy drives us to explore new frontiers, create unforgettable experiences, and build a legacy that inspires future generations." | | | | Jeffrey Housenbold |
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Why it matters: This is MrBeast's first big move to flesh out his exec team since ending his exclusive relationship with talent management firm Night. It's clear he's putting things in order to take more personal control of his business. |
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Stars like Ryan Trahan, MrBeast, Airrack, Casey Neistat, and the Sidemen have already found the beat with Lickd. Ready to discover why YouTube star Chris MD (6M subscribers) says Lickd "makes the viewing experience for your audience SO much more enjoyable"? |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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DATA: STREAMERS ON THE RISE 📈 |
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Florida man, fitness enthusiast, sock collector, and streamer—StreetGrind does it all |
How it started: StreetGrind and his friends used to hop on their Xbox 360s and dream of going pro in games like Halo and Gears of War. He knew he was pretty good at beating those friends, but he didn't really think he could do anything professional with games—until he found Twitch. |
It was 2018 and he was scrolling Facebook in his office, where he worked full-time as a software engineer. "I found this person who was livestreaming a video game in real-time and people were interacting with it. I was like, 'Wow,'" he says. "I never knew something like this existed. That origin story is a little bit different than other people who may have started with Justin.tv and they saw streaming there and really got incorporated into it. That was my real intro."
To get familiar with this new world, he joined a couple of established fighting game streamers' communities, "and the thing is actually wanting to be there and not expecting anything in return," he says. "What ended up happening was people ended up being like, 'Do you stream?' I was like, "Yes, I stream a little bit of so-and-so.' They say, 'Okay, I'll go ahead and I will check you out.'"
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How it's going: Being an active member of other creators' communities (especially in the fighting game sphere, which is super tight-knit on Twitch) helped Street establish his own stream slowly and steadily over the past six years. But in the past six months, he's seen growing success on TikTok—and that success is carrying over to Twitch, making May his channel's most-viewed month yet. |
Get all the deets in our full chat with him here. |
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INSIDE SIDEMEN |
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The hottest new reality show is on YouTube |
The premiere: The Sidemen are taking their shot with reality TV. This week, the U.K.-based, seven-man content supergroup dropped the first series of Inside, a show where they take the time-honored reality format of locking a bunch of people in a house together to see what goes wrong, and infuse that with the high-energy vibe of their YouTube content—all with a £1 million prize on the line. |
The show's two-hour first episode introduced contestants like digital creators Joe Weller and Fanum and reality vets like Love Island's Chloe Burrows. And the Sidemen's fans dug it, sending it soaring past 9 million views. |
The premiere went live on the Sidemen's main channel, where they have over 21 million subscribers, but subsequent episodes dropped on their second channel, MoreSidemen (8.5 million). The location change doesn't appear to have affected viewers' enthusiasm, though: together, episodes 2-5 have racked up over 11 million views.
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So, why a reality show? Sideman Vikkstar123 shared some insight: |
| ❝ | | | "We've always grown up in the UK and watched reality TV throughout our whole childhoods, from Big Brother to Love Island to I'm a Celebrity," he told the BBC. "We were thinking, 'OK, this year, what is our new project?' Why not have a stab at our own spin on a reality TV show?" |
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Why it matters: The Sidemen have become a major force on YouTube, and with Inside, they're moving into ever more high-production content that rivals what TV networks and streaming services are putting out. And we suspect YouTube is very happy about that. |
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WATCH THIS 📺 |
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A beloved livestream queen |
The streams: We know this is a little bit sad, but today's Watch This comes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which surged to digital popularity during COVID because it set up 24/7 livestreams on YouTube that showed some of its most popular exhibits, so people from all around the world could enjoy its animals and their environments during lockdown. |
The lady: One of those animals was Rosa, the aquarium's eldest sea otter and champion surrogate mom. She raised 15 abandoned pups during her tenure, and was well-known to Monterey Bay's online supporters. Unfortunately, she passed away this week—but to remember her fondly, the aquarium has uploaded a memorial video with some of Rosa's most charming on-camera moments. |
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While the loss of Rosa is a big one, this is also a moment to celebrate the rest of the animals at Monterey Bay Aquarium, which continues to offer nine 24/7 livestreams of animals like spider crabs, penguins, jellyfish, and the rest of its thriving otter community. |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort. |
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