October 17, 2024 | Read Online

TOGETHER WITH

It's Thursday and the Duolingo owl is ready for its close-up. The sassy mascot—which reps the world's most popular language-learning app—is the star of Duo Unleashed, a five-part WEBTOON comic.

Today's News

🏠 Twitch wants to be a "house of brands"
🎨 Colorful kids channels rule the U.S. YouTube charts
📕 TikTok's parent company breaks into print media
🤝 Roblox establishes a council to help teens protect their own
📷 YouTube shares the deets about where its videos come from

IN THE RED

Will becoming a "house of brands" be enough to keep Twitch off the chopping block?

Amazon's perspective: Amazon's corporate overlords are cracking down on Twitch. According to The Information, the platform is "in the crosshairs" of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thanks to its ongoing lack of profitability.

Twitch is already seeing a clear injection of Amazon corporate into its operations. The ecommerce giant has tapped one of its own corporate development executives, Viral Thacker, to lead a team "across all ad products, countries and customer segments" at Twitch that will report to Alan Moss, Amazon's VP of Global Ad Sales.

Thacker was previously involved with Twitch in 2020, when Amazon put the platform's ad teams under its own umbrella and started keeping a closer eye on its branding (and its spending). The exec later pivoted to oversee Amazon's emerging businesses team—but now he's back, just as Amazon wraps Twitch into video ad packages that include offerings like Prime Video, Freevee, and Fire TV.

Twitch's perspective: Amazon might be eager to amp up Twitch's selling power, but the platform itself is determined to demonstrate that its value goes beyond financial growth. Twitch Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Delphin told The Drum that the platform's marketing goal is "not necessarily about driving a direct result" like sales or clicks, and that it would rather establish itself as a "house of brands"—"kind of like a streaming service" that promotes individual shows instead of its own company identity. In this case, Twitch would be promoting streamers, who would then develop strong communities that spend time watching them—and therefore watching video ads.

"The job is creator marketing. We reach viewers when creators are effective. When they're growing, when they're inspired, they bring other creators in. Creators bring viewers in."

Rachel Delphin, Twitch Chief Marketing Officer

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

Family favorites ruled this week's YouTube rankings, with kid-friendly channels Toys and Colors and J House jr. claiming respective spots at #1 and #2 in the U.S. charts. (Tubefilter)
According to self-proclaimed "leaker" Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram appears to be working on a new Social Library tool that would allow users to "easily find posts, Reels, and media you've shared or received." (The Verge)
A California federal court has denied Meta's attempt to dismiss two lawsuits that accuse it of endangering underage users with addictive algorithms on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. (TechRadar)
TikTok is joining forces with the British Beauty Council to "help British beauty brands unlock the power of TikTok Shop and the world of social commerce for success." (Social Media Today)

HOT OFF THE PRESSES

TikTok's parent company will soon publish actual, physical books

The announcement: Bytedance's year-old publishing company—aka 8th Note Press—has already capitalized on the power of #BookTok by releasing ebooks in viral genres like "romantasy" and young adult fiction. Now, the TikTok parent company is expanding the scope of 8th Note by joining forces with independent firm Zando. That partnership will result in the publication of 10 to 15 print books per year, beginning in 2025.

"Physical books are still overwhelmingly the most popular format, and certainly in specific genres…they're still super important. So we knew that we needed to be in physical books."

Jacob Bronstein, 8th Note Head of Editorial and Marketing (via The New York Times)

The context: Bytedance's move into print media harkens back to an earlier era of the creator industry. A decade ago, YouTube stars catalyzed an increase in print media sales by publishing books through imprints like Simon & Schuster's Keywords Press. At the time, it was clear that fans didn't just want to read a book authored by creators like iJustine or Joey Graceffa—they wanted the keepsake of a physical copy.

The same is true for TikTok's #BookTok community, which has become a vehicle for reading recommendations and spawned everything from production deals and publishing startups to an a literary award show. Like Keywords Press, #BookTok is boosting sales of print books at brick-and-mortar bookshops—and Bytedance is eager to tap into that momentum.

TEEN TALK

Roblox is forming a council dedicated to "fostering a safe and positive online environment" for teens

The problem: Roblox has built a thriving creator community (one that made nearly $750 million last year), secured a growing pile of brand deals, and partnered with multinational advertising holding company WPP to develop a program that turns marketers into Roblox experts. But that success hasn't come without drawbacks: as it's grown, Roblox has increasingly grappled with concerns about the welfare of underage users and expectations of brand safety from high-profile advertisers.

This past July, 20 current and former members of the platform's staff told Bloomberg that it receives "hundreds" of reports about child safety every day, and that they're worried it's incapable of addressing the sheer scale of the problem. Just this week, a report from Hindenburg Research called Roblox "a pedophile hellscape for kids."

The (partial) solution: To combat those concerns, Roblox is building upon its Youth Engagement Program by forming an advisory Teen Council that will "champion digital well-being" among teens and "ensure that our platform continues to be a place where people can have safe, creative, and positive experiences." The council will bring together up to 15 U.S. teenagers aged 14-17 to "serve as advocates for digital well-being and advisers on civility." Those participants will spend five months collaborating with Roblox's internal teams by offering opinions about user safety, platform features, policies, and user resources.

It remains to be seen how Roblox will put those insights into practice—but in the meantime, the platform is taking a page out of Snap's book by painting itself as a positive influence on young users:

"In a recent survey we conducted with 530 teens in the U.S., 87% of respondents agreed that gaming is important to helping them improve their mental well-being."

Andres Cuervo, Roblox Youth Engagement Program Manager

WATCH THIS 📺

Don't worry: This video really was filmed at the zoo

The partnership: YouTube is joining forces with the Content Authenticity Initiative to bring the C2PA standard to videos across its platform. In other words: you're about to see a lot of labels confirming that vids were "captured with a camera"—not created with AI. It's easy to see why those authentication labels are an asset for viewers in 2024. With models like OpenAI's Sora displaying advanced video generation capabilities, it's more important than ever to differentiate between what's real and what's AI.

The video: The first YouTube video to display the C2PA standard was uploaded by tech company Truepic—and it includes an easter egg from YouTube's distant past. Treupic's Jeff McGregor introduced the new labels by referencing the first-ever video uploaded to YouTube, which was filmed at the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.

McGregor took a trip to the same zoo to film his own contribution to the platform's history: "the first-ever end-to-end authenticated video that will ever be uploaded to YouTube." Check it out here.

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