Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.
This week, The Wiggles are facing a TikTok controversy, ChatGPT is celebrating its third birthday, and MrBeast wants creators to form a tighter-knit YouTube community.
Creator commotion
Don’t worry: The Wiggles aren’t out to ruin your childhood. After inadvertently starring in a TikTok video set to Keli Holiday’s song “Ecstasy” in the aftermath of the TikTok Awards, the kid-friendly musical group issued a statement to confirm that they don’t, in fact, support illegal drug use. Personally, we’re relieved.
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Are YouTubers living “on separate planets”? MrBeast took to X in late November to voice concerns about the lack of creator collaboration in the YouTube community. His main question: “How do we get the YouTube community more tight-knit like the Twitch streaming community?”
AI influencers are making bank. According to a recent report from the New York Post, lifestyle creator Aitana Lopez makes up to $11,000 per month from social media. The catch: despite teaming up with brands like Amazon and posting viral travel content, the Instagram-famous star isn’t actually a real person.
Marquay The Goat’s memory lives on. 24-year-old creator Marquay Collins (aka Marquay the Goat) passed away on November 26, as announced by his mother Sonja Collins. The young star’s death was met with an outpouring of support and tribute posts from fans and friends on TikTok, where he entertained a following of nearly 7 million.
Platform headlines
ChatGPT celebrated its third birthday yesterday. The world has changed in a big way since the launch of OpenAI’s iconic chatbot turned the AI race into an all-out sprint to the finish line. Will ads be the next big thing for ChatGPT?
Australia wants kids to stop using Twitch. The land down under has added Twitch to the list of platforms covered under an upcoming law that will ban users below the age of 16 from social media hubs. (Pinterest, on the other hand, still seems to be in the clear.)
YouTube’s new promotable feed sounds familiar. Google‘s video platform is testing a new type of feed that will allow users to shape their personal recommendation algorithm via text prompts. That experiment reflects Elon Musk’s plan to make X’s recommendation algorithm “purely AI” in order to give users the ability “to adjust your feed dynamically just by asking Grok.”
In other YouTube news, the platform is expanding pre-publish checks. TeamYouTube has announced that the platform is testing a new feature “that checks for some Community Guidelines violations in the video upload flow, similar to Copyright and Advertiser-friendly Guidelines checks.” The goal: to help users “avoid the frustration of a removal or strike.”
Democrats want to know what’s up with the U.S. TikTok deal. The next deadline for ByteDance’s divestiture from TikTok is coming up, and legislators are eager to know the details of the deal. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is the latest politician to press Trump for more information in the light of recent comments from Beijing that suggest China might not be fully on board.
Platform headlines
ByteDance achieves $480 billion valuation. A bidding war for a sizable chunk of ByteDance equity drove up the tech company’s price tag, making it one of the world’s most valuable startups. Keep that massive valuation in mind the next time the U.S. government tries to play hardball with TikTok’s deep-pocketed owner.
Nvidia isn’t a gaming company anymore. Remember when the tech giant was best known for selling GPUs and other pieces of gaming hardware? Pepperidge Farm remembers, even if Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is now saying that his company’s immense AI chip sales have led it away from the gaming world.
This is your brain on Instagram. A study involving 98,299 participants examined the ways that short-form videos affect the brain. Those clips can cause social isolation, sleep problems, anxiety, and loneliness, but at least the dog memes are funny.
Holiday highlights
Is the holiday music fandom bigger than sports? According to Uproxx Studios CEO Jarret Myer, UPROXX’s Holiday Hits & Classics playlists attract at least 200 million monthly views during the holiday season, while channels with strong holiday catalogs see an average +89% view surge in Q4. Myer’s sports comparison: “The biggest games are massive—but holiday music owns multiple weeks, every year, across millions of living rooms at once.”
It wouldn’t be the holidays without Tini’s mac ‘n cheese. A recent profile in Rolling Stone deemed Tineke Younger “TikTok’s Thanksgiving Queen,” and it’s not hard to see why. The creator (aka Tini) has made a name for herself by teaching TikTok fans how to make simple and delicious meals. Her iconic mac ‘n cheese recipe might not be the most intuitive of the bunch (viewers often comment on the woes of making a roux), but it’s become an integral part of many fans’ holiday spreads.
MrBeast is going all out for the holidays. Over the last few weeks, our Top 5 Branded charts have been absolutely dominated by MrBeast videos sponsored by Feastables. YouTube’s most-followed creator has been on a mission to promote his snack brand as the ideal solution for any and all holiday needs (from Halloween candy to stocking stuffers to holiday baking ingredients), but Feastables isn’t the only food brand on his promotional slate. In one of his latest videos, MrBeast reminded fans that he also launched his own branded meat sticks in partnership with frequent sponsor Jack Link’s.
Industry potpourri
Like Nastya is coming to Zigazoo. One of YouTube’s top kid-friendly creators is bringing her content to a new platform. Zigazoo, which describes itself as “the world’s largest social network for kids,” announced on LinkedIn that “Nastya’s new Zigazoo channel will give her fans a safe, positive, and interactive space to connect through creative prompts, fun challenges, and videos.”
A former MrBeast strategist is building something new. Jay Neo—a former content lead for MrBeast—is joining forces with Palantir vet Shivam Kumar and creator Harry Jones to build Palo: a creator-focused platform that combines an AI-powered ideation and planning tool with analytics and community.
