If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s animals. And if there’s anyone who knows how to tap into the power of that love to raise charitable funds, it’s streamer Maya Higa, whose cow Winnie is becoming a bona fide Twitch star herself.

Higa came to streaming in 2019, after getting degrees in agricultural education and communications, and completing internships at Zoo to You Conservation Ambassadors, Charles Paddock Zoo, and Free Flight Exotic Bird Sanctuary. She didn’t plan to stream about animals–in fact, her streamer friends encouraged her to get into the musical side of things after she posted a clip of herself singing on Instagram, so she mainly sang and played the guitar.

But one day while streaming, she featured juvenile red-tailed hawk Bean, whom she was professionally rehabilitating. The overwhelming viewer response to Bean and Higa’s passion for conservation changed the trajectory of her content, and Higa began making plans to use her streaming presence to launch her own animal rescue.

That paid off in 2021, when she successfully raised a founding fund of $500,000 in one 24-hour livestream, auctioning off items like a golden shovel and T-Pain’s Gucci slippers. Soon after, Alveus Sanctuary opened its doors in Austin, Texas, as a nonprofit rehab center and virtual educational hub for people interested in learning about North America’s wildlife.

Unfortunately, Alveus was impacted by the recent Texas flash floods. All animals and staff were reported safe, but the sanctuary’s access road was destroyed. Streamers like Valkyrae rallied to Higa’s support, and raised over $180,000 to help her rebuild.

But Alveus is also raising money thanks to a Red Angus cow named Winnie the Moo. Livestreams of animals at rescues, aquariums, and zoos became popular during COVID lockdowns, giving humans a chance to experience nature from afar, and in some cases giving animals the kind of interaction they needed to continue feeling safe once IRL visitation returned. Some organizations have stopped streaming by now, but others, like Monterey Bay Aquarium and Alveus, run 24-hour streams of their animals.

Alveus’s dedicated Twitch channel has 315,000 followers, and at press time has around ~1,200 concurrent viewers. The stream is multi-camera, showing animals from around the rescue. There’s Awa and Akela, a pair of wolf hybrids, crows Abbott and Coconut, Fenn and Reed the red foxes, Pushpop the tortoise…and, of course, there’s Winnie.

As Dexerto reports, there’s two things making Winnie a top-tier streamer:

1. Alveus has hooked up a system that lets stream viewers donate money to give her treats via an automatic feeder
2. Winnie has a very large personality. She knows exactly where treats come from, and if viewers dare to stop donating, she vigorously headbutts the trough and gives a big ol’ demanding moo right into the camera.

Winnie originally came from a cattle operation in Oklahoma, and with Alveus now serves as an ambassador for the beef industry, educating people on how “the massive demand for beef around the world has led to vast deforestation and land clearing to provide space for cattle farming, resulting in habitat loss in critical ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest, as well as the methane generated contributing to global warming,” Alveus says.

She also has her own plush coming out from Youtooz.

For those worried Winnie will pack on a little weight from overzealous fans, not all the money being raised (so far $5,600 of a $10,000 goal) is going into her belly. Alveus says donos are used to buy feed, pay vet bills, and upkeep habits for all of the sanctuary’s animals.

Higa also chimed in on Twitter to make sure people know Alveus feeds Winnie staple foods, too.

“Just so everyone knows these are just treats for Winnie,” she said. “[S]he absolutely gets fed every day in addition to this.”

With the news cycle pretty dark these days, we’re happy to get to spotlight a more lighthearted story. We know the internet loves dogs and cats, but hey–cows need snoot boops too.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Twitch by James Hale
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Jordan Matter, the self-proclaimed “oldest guy on YouTube,” expected a few thousand people to show up to his daughter Salish’s teen skincare brand launch.

Instead, a reported ~87,000 people packed into New Jersey’s American Dream mall Sept. 6, hoping to see Salish in person and be some of the first to get their hands on Sincerely Yours products, which are being sold at Sephora. The event was supposed to run from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST, and the first 100 people in line were promised they’d receive either a meet-and-greet with Salish or a limited-edition Sincerely Yours sweatshirt.

The Publish Press reports that by 7 a.m. on launch day, the mall had already reached capacity, with 10,000 people waiting in a secondary overflow venue and 2,000 in line at the mall’s Sephora location. Jordan and Salish went onstage in the mall’s main atrium, documenting the appearance in a livestream titled THE SCARIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!

If the reported number is correct, that means Salish–who’s 15 and has been the face of 58-year-old Jordan’s channel for several years now–drew more people to American Dream than both James Charles‘ Morphe lauch in 2018, and MrBeast‘s Beast Burger brick-and-mortar opening in 2022. (Charles, by the way, is an investor in Sincerely Yours.)

Police were called to the event, and American Dream ended up shuttering it early, citing safety concerns. Jordan and Salish were prevented from addressing fans, leading to complaints from people calling the launch “completely unorganized [and] unsafe.”

“We signed up, got tickets and they were never scanned because it was open to everyone,” one attendee wrote on TikTok. “So deceiving! She came out briefly and we could barely see her.”

As for American Dream, it told People, “Today’s event saw an incredible turnout, once again proving the power of American Dream and our partnerships with iconic influencers. Although the massive attendance did impact the original schedule, Salish was still able to connect with many of her fans in person and through her on-stage performance.”

Organizational challenges aside, the sheer amount of people who showed up at the event have pushed it beyond our industry and into mainstream news, getting Salish the kind of media attention you normally only see for major names like MrBeast and Kai Cenat. And while career photographer-turned-YouTuber Jordan has cultivated a significant audience around Salish with will-they-won’t-they videos about her love life and (scripted) wacky teen adventures, she’s not as well-known as MrBeast or Cenat outside the digital video ecosphere, making this an interesting case study.

Jordan tells us the idea for Sincerely Yours “really started with Salish. As a teenager, she was searching for skincare that actually worked for her age group–something clean, simple, and designed for Gen Z.” After realizing there was “a huge gap in the market, we decided to create it together,” he adds.

About the American Dream shutdown, he commented on the crowd being “so big,” and said, “What meant the most to us was seeing how much love and support our fans brought with them, connecting with them is always the highlight of everything we do.”

The Matters’ team wouldn’t disclose revenue from the launch, but said all product sold out within an hour. Sincerely Yours’ items are priced under $30, in keeping with its tween/teen target demos’ wallet sizes.

A longtime creator cosmetics industry expert tells us they would expect a launch of that anticipated size to have around $50,000 worth of product available.

Sincerely Yours is currently selling online at Sephora.

Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale
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Many of today’s teenagers are members of Gen Alpha, and as per usual, that cohort has a clear preference for YouTube over other digital platforms. London-based ad tech provider Precise TV has shared the latest edition of its Precise Advertiser Report – Teens & Youth (PARTY), and the results show that ads on YouTube — and on its short-form format — are driving purchases at efficient rates.

Precise TV’s annual appraisal of teenage browsing habits involves a survey of 1,000 U.S. teens between the ages of 13 and 17, as well as their parents. 91% of the queried teens said they use YouTube; not only is that percentage the highest figure for any platform, it also represents a 14% year-over-year increase. TikTok was the second-most commonly used platform, reaching 75% of surveyed teens, while Instagram was right behind with a 74% share.

YouTube’s dominance of today’s teens is not just a product of reach — the Google-owned hub also keeps people watching for hours at a time. PARTY respondents who reported using TikTok were more likely to say that they browse the app for an hour or less, whereas for YouTube, sessions over two hours were more common than 30-minute bursts of activity.

The combination of long reach and high watch time powers YouTube’s success in the ad world. 25% of the teens who contributed to the PARTY study said that the last item they requested from their parents came from an ad on YouTube Shorts. That percentage compares favorably to the 12% of teens who requested items after seeing TikTok ads. Purchase rates for YouTube Shorts ads were also higher than the equivalent rates on TikTok.

Photo credit: Precise TV

These results line up with the data Precise TV has gleaned from younger members of Gen Alpha. Its latest survey of kids between the ages of two and 12 — which it refers to via the abbreviation PARK — found that 75% of the young respondents ask their parents to buy something after seeing an ad for it on YouTube Shorts.

These findings line up with other recent data points that have also underscored YouTube’s ongoing appeal among American youth. Last year, for example, the Pew Research Center found that Google’s video hub outpaces the competition when it comes to teenage reach. Precise TV’s report corroborates that assertion while digging deeper into the platforms, creators, and content categories that are driving teen culture. More details about the agency’s work can be found on its website.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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The unlicensed reuse of YouTube videos as generative AI training material is a hot-button issue in the creator world, and a new report shows how deep that rabbit hole really goes. As part of an investigation titled AI Watchdog, The Atlantic explored large AI training data sets and published a tool that lets users search through those sets in search of specific creators and channels.

Videos that are repurposed for AI training typically have identifying details removed, but Atlantic reporter Alex Reisner found a workaround by “extracting unique identifiers from the data sets and looking them up on YouTube.” From there, he was able to find the sources of the content included in these sets, a list that included creators like Jon Peters.

“A large number of the videos in these data sets are from news and educational channels, such as the BBC (which has at least 33,000 videos in the data sets, across its various brands) and TED (nearly 50,000),” Reisner wrote. “Hundreds of thousands of others—if not more—are from individual creators, such as Peters.”

The report will undoubtedly cause further alarm among the creators who were already up in arms regarding the questionable ethics of AI training sets. Ripping YouTube videos en masse violates the platform’s terms of service, but the presence of creator channels in these data sets shows that YouTube has more work to do if it wants to fully enforce that portion of its rules.

Once the data sets reach tech companies, culpability is hard to pin down. Since the Nvidias and Metas of the world don’t rip the training videos off YouTube themselves, they have plausible deniability when it comes to third-party sets. Spokespeople from Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon who responded to The Atlantic‘s request for comment expressed their shared belief that the YouTube-based training they do is completely above board.

Those statements may make some creators feel as if they are helpless to defend the ownership of their work. There are, however, some steps that can be taken by those who want to prevent their videos from being repurposed for AI training. Including overlays, such as watermarks or captions, makes videos less appealing to genAI developers (who don’t want those features to show up in the content generated by their models). Platforms like YouTube also lets creators opt out of having their videos made available for training, though based on the Atlantic report, it’s fair to question how effective that toggle is.

The court of law could provide another layer of defense against unauthorized AI training, but creator-led lawsuits — such as David Millette‘s case against Nvidia — have already been dismissed. If judges do end up siding with AI developer

Filed under: Articles, Artificial Intelligence, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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In the age of AI slop, Reddit has become a busy hub for people who prioritize human-to-human effort and interaction. It’s one of the few places anymore where you can still find discussions among and assistance from real people instead of slopped-out, generated bot replies. It calls itself “the most human place on the internet”–and, when human-impersonating AI bots were found on r/changemyview back in May, it promised to “keep Reddit human” by ousting nonhuman accounts.

That doesn’t mean it’s a shining star. It’s said modern “AI”–actually large language models, as Markiplier recently emphasized to us–is “incredibly useful for things like summarization, safety, translation, and moderation.” It’s also selling data to OpenAI (whose CEO Sam Altman is one of Reddit’s biggest shareholders) for use in model training.

And now, amidst setting a new record-high stock price of $253.57/share, it’s tweaking how some of that data is displayed to the public.

“Starting today, we’ll replace the ‘Member Count’ metric on each subreddit’s page with two new signals: Visitors and Contributions,” the platform said in an official blog post. “Unlike subscribers, which were often a measure of a subreddit’s age and not current activity, these new metrics show how many people are actively participating in communities and how much content is being created.”

The new Visitors metric shows how many unique visitors were on that particular subreddit in the past seven days, “based on a rolling 28-day average,” it explained.

As for Contributions, that figure shows the number of non-removed posts and comments made in a subreddit over the past seven days.

Reddit said that, on top of the previous Member Count metric being better at showing a community’s age instead of its current activity, plenty of subreddits are visited by lurkers (aka people who don’t post or comment, but do read, often prolifically), as well as non-members who post and/or comment.

Basically, the previous Member Count was including potentially inactive members, while not accounting for readers and non-members contributing currently and meaningfully.

“With this update, Reddit becomes one of the first major platforms to publicly display active participation, focusing on meaningful, real-time engagement rather than subscriber numbers,” Reddit said. “By emphasizing active participation over passive membership, we’re continuing to highlight what makes Reddit unique: real people engaging in real conversations.”

This change makes sense, especially considering Reddit’s real-people-centric branding and its push to become a more content creator-forward platform. As it said, this change will count not just a subreddit’s number of active participants, but also the amount of content being made on a rolling basis. More performance metrics, not to mention more accurate performance metrics, might draw more creators–and more advertisers.

We’re curious what Reddit will do with this data moving forward, but for right now, it’s in a pretty good spot. Its all-time stock high was in large part driven by stellar Q2 earnings showing 78% year-over-year growth, with revenue 17% above analyst predictions. Its net income was $89 million–a major improvement over Q2 2024, which posted a net loss of $10 million thanks to IPO costs.

When Reddit launched its IPO, shares were priced at $34. Someone who bought in then is now sitting on a return of over 320%.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, reddit by James Hale
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Vimeo has found a buyer. The 21-year-old video hub has been acquired by Bending Spoons, a tech company that will pay $1.38 billion to pick up a platform that has long promoted artists and their work.

According to an announcement published on the Vimeo website, the all-cash deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2025. “We’re looking forward to welcoming Vimeo into the Bending Spoons portfolio,” said Bending Spoons CEO and Co-Founder Luca Ferrari in a statement. “Vimeo is a pioneering brand in the video space, serving a passionate, global community of creators and businesses. At Bending Spoons, we acquire companies with the expectation of owning and operating them indefinitely, and we look forward to realizing Vimeo’s full potential as we reach new heights together.”

The saga of Vimeo is a long, winding tale that begins in 2004, a few months before YouTube hit the market. From its inception, the platform championed independent creators by equipping them with a flexible video hosting option. Through its Staff Picks, Vimeo highlighted eclectic and challenging titles from its library.

Efforts to expand Vimeo’s scope proved challenging. A planned SVOD service fizzled out, as did a short-form push. As Vimeo vets made it to the big screen, the company endured a spinoff from former parent InterActiveCorp and several rounds of layoffs.

More recently, Vimeo has established itself as a purveyor of enterprise products. Its streaming service builder has helped creators like The Try Guys establish boutique SVOD hubs.

In the Bending Spoons portfolio, Vimeo will live alongside several other internet-age brands of note, including the file hosting service WeTransfer, the to-do list app Evernote, and the social gathering planner Meetup. Some of those companies have ventured into video content themselves, and they can now link up with a platform known for its powerful streaming technology.

Bending Spoons’ post-acquisition plans for its holdings have typically included controversial changes and personnel cuts. With its Vimeo transaction, the Milan-based conglomerate looks likely to stick with its usual playbook. It plans to take its new property private once the deal closes, and Vimeo CEO Philip Moyer recently announced on LinkedIn that his company will cut approximately 10% of its workforce.

Even if Vimeo is set to go private, its stock price is currently on the up-and-up. News of the impending acquisition led to a 60% jump in share price during morning trading.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, Vimeo by Sam Gutelle
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Is TikTok actually primed to disrupt Google in the realm of search, or is that claim overblown? You’ll get different answers depending on who you ask, but according to TikTok itself, the app’s search push is paying off. New research presented in a blog post shows a closing gap between Google and TikTok’s respective search engines, especially among Gen Z.

The data in question comes from a study TikTok conducted alongside the marketing firm WARC. By surveying more than 1,000 U.S. consumers on their search habits, the two companies painted a picture of an industry that is currently undergoing massive change.

The survey’s Millennial cohort are still largely loyal to the “leading traditional search platform,” as the researchers put it. 94% of that group claimed to use Google Search at least weekly, compared to 64% for TikTok Search.

When it comes to Gen Z, those two percentages are much closer to one another. 90% of Zoomer respondents reported weekly Google Search use, while 86% of them conducted weekly searches on TikTok.

These results require some context. Rather than using TikTok as a one-for-one replacement for Google Search, many consumers turn to the ByteDance-owned app while searching in specific categories. Queries related to fashion and beauty advice, for example, are 26% more likely to occur on a social video engine like TikTok, according to the WARC data. Other common TikTok Search topics include cooking (+23%), entertainment (+22%), and DIY (+15%).

It’s worth noting that TikTok has ulterior motives behind this granular approach to search traffic. It recently added targeting to the search ads it launched in 2023. The WARC study hands the keys to brands, telling them who they should target with their search ads (and why).

The rise of generative AI-powered search engines adds another wrinkle to this conversation. ChatGPT has been hailed as a major disruptor in the search world, but the WARC data shows that OpenAI’s chatbot still lags behind Google and TikTok. Only 60% of Gen Z and 50% of Millennials made weekly queries on the “leading AI search platform,” the survey claimed.

Though ChatGPT could eventually achieve similar market saturation to Google and TikTok, it’s biggest effect on the search industry could end up being the changes it brings to its competitors. Google is expanding its AI Overviews to provide chatbot-style search results of its own, but that decision has proven quite unpopular and may even be causing people to click fewer links on their results pages.

If Google continues down its current path, we could be headed to a fragmented search world, in which ChatGPT handles complex queries, TikTok serves users who want audiovisual results, and Google plays the middle while hanging onto its industry-leading market share. In other words, we’re going back to the time when internet users consulted multiple sources (Ask Jeeves, Altavista, etc.) in search of the perfect result. Congrats, Big Tech: You’ve made the 90s happen again. Now go fetch.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, TikTok by Sam Gutelle
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In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

Technoblade was not the first YouTube star to die, but his passing helped millions of fans understand just how special the relationship between creators and fans can be. His 2022 death due to a stage four sarcoma was a reminder that YouTube is not just a place for new beginnings, but for bittersweet endings as well.

After launching his YouTube channel in 2013, Technoblade (whose real name was Alex) moved up the ranks of the internet Minecraft community. His adventures on the Hypixel server inspired videos that attracted millions of subscribers, and his activity on the Dream SMP put him in close contact with other top Minecrafters — and once COVID lockdowns rolled around, the rest of the world joined the fun, too.

By the time 2021 rolled around, Technoblade’s subscriber count had reached eight digits, and he earned a spot on YouTube’s year-end list of its top creators. Unfortunately, another 2021 happening shocked Technoblade’s fans: The beloved gamer announced that he was undergoing treatment for cancer.

Technoblade never lost his upbeat attitude, even as his condition worsened. He died in June 2022 and was immediately enshrined as an internet legend. His farewell video, which includes a letter to his fans and a tribute from his father, has been seen more than 120 million times to date.

A YouTube star dying is a curious thing. Online video platforms constantly promote new material and encourage continuous channel growth. The word for someone who uploads that material and experiences that growth is a “creator,” a term that implies building new things and adding to the ever-expanding tapestry of internet lore. Subtractions from the YouTube community were once so rare that it took a lot of effort to even go on a temporary break.

The death of a creator like Technoblade is a shock to that system. It requires viewers to recognize that not even this platform — known for introducing wave after wave of young, upstart artists — can live forever.

For the viewers who felt close to Technoblade after devouring hundreds of hours of his Minecraft gameplay, that lesson was a hard pill to swallow. “Through this new online, offline world we have, many [fans] will feel like they will know Technoblade and other members of those online communities better than they know kids in their own school,” said Richard England, a vicar at Crofton Parish, in an interview with the New York Times. “They will have spent just as much time with them.”

The nature of YouTube made it difficult to cope with Technoblade’s passing, but it also preserved his legacy. The fans who struggled to comprehend such a terrible sadness found some solace in the fearless, positive attitude the Minecraft star brought to his videos. The same closeness that made his passing so tough reminded us what he had stood for in life. It reminded us why creators come to YouTube in the first place — to connect with people who don’t feel adequately served by traditional channels.

Technoblade himself put it best in the intro to one of his best-known videos, which featured Minecraft‘s SkyBlock mode. “I think SkyBlock at its core is the ultimate challenge in resource management,” he said. “As you carefully navigate your absurd circumstance you gain a new appreciation for the few things you have.”

Even when he was close to death, Technoblade held onto the beautiful things YouTube had brought to him. He continued to accept those who were different, and he spent his time making people a little happier than they were before they clicked on his channel.

“Technoblade created a community of young people, many of them neurodivergent, and offered them acceptance, hope and love,” reads a 2022 column published in the Sydney Morning Herald. “The world is a dark and difficult place for many kids, and the sense of connection and belonging offered by online communities can be genuinely lifesaving. Technoblade inspired his fans to keep pushing forwards, to keep striving, and to hang on.”

When you understand Technoblade’s life in that context, it becomes easier to see the actions his fans have taken to carry on his legacy posthumously. He has been memorialized in the bygone Dream SMP, his pal TommyInnit has helped keep his channel alive, and Hypixel is still one of Minecraft‘s biggest servers. Technoblade even got his own easter egg in the 2025 Minecraft Movie.

Technoblade’s generous spirit is also present in the world of cancer research. Donations to organizations that study sarcomas have become more frequent. Technoblade was known for creating spaces where outsiders could feel comfortable, and the people he served are carrying on his benevolent mission.

In many ways, the story of Technoblade has become an inspiring tale, despite its inherent tragedy. In 2022, conversations surrounding parasocial relationships started to become more common, as observers questioned the unbalanced bonds between fans and their favorite creators. As those discussions continue to grow and evolve, it will be important to keep Technoblade in mind. His channel proved that parasocial relationships aren’t all bad. Sometimes, they equip fans with the tools they need to cope with big, unprecedented feelings. Thanks to the intentionality with which he lived his life, his fans will stay connected to him long after his passing — and that, as they say, is why Technoblade never dies.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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Roblox is following the social media preferences of its young userbase and rolling out a TikTok copycat feed where users can share 30-second vertical gameplay clips.

As you probably know, Gen Z is all in on vertical video. We’ve seen this pattern growing steadily since TikTok went big during the 2020 lockdowns, and recent research from survey company Toluna showed once again that Gen Z prefers to consume content on TikTok (64% of respondents), Instagram Reels (55%) and YouTube Shorts (54%).

Roblox, of course, wants in on this. A sizable portion of its hundreds of millions of monthly active users are kids (something that’s been causing it more and more PR and legal grief lately) and it’s already one of the top gaming platform for Gen Z and Alpha demographics. With this new feed–called Roblox Moments–it’s clearly aiming to become a top video consumption platform, too.

And, at the same time, it’s using Moments to appeal to developers, calling the feed “part of our vision for discovery.”

“Moments is an on-platform short-form video experience for creation and discovery,” it said in a company blog post. “Soon, we’ll release Moments APIs, which will help creators attract new audiences and drive stronger engagement. We’re also sharing the source code used for our own Roblox Moments experience so creators can start building and customizing right away.”

For now, the actual core components of Moments–content creation capabilities like trimming, adding music, and writing descriptions, plus the feed itself for video viewing–are launching into beta.

That beta is rolling out slowly to users 13 and older. That’s the standard age for COPPA regulations, which tells us Roblox may be planning to add short-form ads to Moments in the future. We wouldn’t be surprised, considering how hard it’s been trying to build the programmatic ad sector it launched last year (to the chagrin of studios who used to make their bank when Roblox would tap them to build custom games for brand partners, a practice they say has lessened since programmatics came into play).

Roblox said that during the beta period, it will work on testing and refining Moments moderation to ensure videos are age-appropriate, TechCrunch reports.

The discovery function of Moments isn’t the only thing Roblox is doing to charm developers.

Also at RDC, it announced it’s increasing the Developer Exchange rate by 8.5%. That means when developers of Roblox games cash out the amount of Robux spent by players in those games, they’ll get $380 per 100,000 Robux, compared to the old rate of $350 per 100,000.

“This is a significant step that reinforces the company’s dedication to fostering an economy where more creators can thrive and succeed,” Roblox told TechCrunch. “For example, the average revenue for a Top 1000 developer was almost $1 million, up 2.9x since 2020.”

Roblox additionally used RDC to announce it too is getting on the generative “AI” bandwagon, this time to launch tools for asset developers that will let them splurt out functional objects like cars and weapons via text prompting. Other incoming AI tools include text-to-speech generation for NPCs, plus real-time player-to-player voice chat translation for in English, Spanish, French, and German.

All of these tools will likely see a fair bit of use, but we’ll be keeping the closest eye on Moments–and seeing whether Roblox can succeed by punching up with the digital video big dogs.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Roblox by James Hale
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Creator industry veteran Phil Ranta founded his new company based on one core principle: “Creators shouldn’t just be influencers-for-hire. They should be owners.”

That company, Stealth Talent, turns creators into business owners by pairing them with “ambitious startup founders,” it tells Tubefilter. The plan is to give creators long-term ownership stakes in (and potentially executive roles at) early-stage businesses, giving them a way out of the brand deal grind and setting them up for a “storied career,” Ranta says. Meanwhile, participating startups benefit from having skilled and savvy in-house digital video creators who are personally invested in their success.

“Many of the top creators I worked with in 2012 are no longer professional content creators today. Some quit, some burned out, but others simply lost their relevance. The brand deal grind is tough,” Ranta, who’s been in our industry for two decades and was an executive at Fullscreen, Studio71, Facebook, and Fixated, says. “Much like smart workers invest their earnings to prepare for the future, creators and celebrities from MrBeast to Ryan Reynolds figured out how to invest their influence, building long-term company value while making short-term financial gains.”

Ranta says the highest long-term value a creator can shoot for is partial or full ownership in companies, and that he founded Stealth Talent to serve as a “co-builder” for these companies. Once it hooks up a creator and a startup, creators will “help shape go-to-market strategies, product launches, and audience-first innovation from day one,” it says. “The result? Startups with instant cultural cachet, and creators with long-term equity upside.”

Stealth Talent is co-owned by venture studio Nobody Studios, which describes itself as being run by a team of “startup artisans and serial entrepreneurs.” Also on the Stealth Talent team are:

• VP of sales Brian Foster (formerly Super League Gaming and Yellow Pike Media)
• Senior Talent Manager Kasia Turek (formerly MoreYellow and Fixated)
• and Senior Talent Manager Katarina Marossy (owner of Disrupt Management)

It’s launching with a roster of over 40 creators, including:

• Cozy Ivan, a lifestyle ASMR chef with 11M followers on TikTok
• Legendary Jay, a special effects/mobile filmmaking expert with 3.7M on TikTok and 2.6M on YouTube
• Paper Eats, a crafty foodie TikToker with 1.1M on TikTok
• Devan Key, a comedian with nearly 9M followers on TikTok

Stealth Talent says it’s signed additional creators in gaming, sports, fashion, and entertainment, and that together, its roster has a following of over 80 million people across platforms.

On top of its Nobody Studios partnership, Stealth Talent teamed up with creator venture studio Butterpie, which does investment and fulfillment across consumer packaged goods, beauty, and apparel. It’s also partnered with Hollywood production studio/representation firm 5x Media for “premium IP” development.

For now, like many businesses in our industry, Stealth Talent is primarily focused on building companies with an artificial intelligence component.

Ranta tells Tubefilter Stealth has already begun building a supplements brand with a “top athlete” and is bringing “top talent” to support Nobody Studios ventures like startup assessment tool Evalify and psychedelics education platform Webdelics. It’s also been pairing creators with existing global IPs via 5x Media.

“Every company in the future will use content as a core part of their go-to-market strategy,” he says. “It’s an exceptionally efficient way to build a customer base. We’re here to help them tap into the right creators, creative, and audience to reach their goals.”

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Outside of France, ZEvent is not a household name, but the latest edition of the annual charity drive is putting it on the map. Across a four-day period that ended on September 7, 325 French streamers came together to raise more than €16.1 million, which will be disbursed across nine recipient charities.

ZEvent dates back to 2016 and has been run almost every year since (there was no event in 2023). The organizers behind the annual drive are esports caster Adrien Nougaret — whose ZeratoR account ranks among France’s most-followed Twitch hubs — and his colleague Alexandre Dachary, better known as Dach.

By bringing together top French creators, who proceed to go live on an official stream one at a time, the ZEvent organizers have been able to raise millions to support a variety of charities. The event first raised a seven-digit sum in 2018, and the total has steadily risen since then.

After three consecutive ZEvent streams that hovered around the €10 million mark, Nougaret and his cadre of streamers broke through in a big way in 2025. Their fundraising total, which translates to about $18.7 million, will be handled by the Fondation de France. The nonprofit will ensure that the money is directed to the chosen charities.
The latest edition of ZEvent isn’t just the biggest charity drive in the event’s history — it is now the most lucrative undertaking of its type ever hosted on a streaming platform. MrBeast raised about $12 million when he took to Kick to support his #TeamWater campaign, but Nougaret and co. blew that total out of the water (no pun intended).

The extraordinary results achieved at ZEvent 2025 are a testament to the cultural power of France’s streaming community. YouTuber Inoxtag demonstrated the powers of les createurs last year, when he turned his trek up Mount Everest into a documentary and subsequently sold 350,000 movie tickets in just 24 hours. Creator content has become so big in France that then-Prime Minister François Bayrou used an August 2025 web series to defend unpopular budget cuts.

Bayrou’s series failed to achieve its goal, as the PM was recently ousted, throwing the French government into chaos. In a sense, France’s economic turmoil helps explain how its creator community has gotten so big. Across the border in Spain, long-term economic difficulties have led consumers to the world of streamers, where they can find free entertainment that fits any budget. As a result, Spain now plays host to some of the biggest streamer events in the entire world, such as Ibai’s record-setting influencer boxing series La Velada del Año.

If France’s national woes persist, members of its streamer community may find more opportunities to grow and leverage their respective followings. Those creators might prefer for the economy to turn around, but hey — at least nine charities are (collectively) €16.1 million richer.

Filed under: Articles, Charity, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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Schwab is out to show Twitch viewers that they can develop positive financial habits in a fun and gamified way. With an event called Twitch Plays Catan, the investment firm is pitting influencers against one another in the titular, hexagonal game world — and it’s dispensing some money management tips along the way.

The Twitch Plays Catan tournament, a two-day affair that runs from September 9-10, fits into a tabletop gaming niche that has been relevant on Twitch since the platform’s early days. We’ve seen popular series centered around role-playing games, chess, and other popular tabletop titles, but the Catan category has been comparatively quiet.

30 years into the German game’s existence, it’s due for a glow-up. To that end, Schwab is borrowing the format of a similar gaming gauntlet: PogChamps. Like in that series, which pits streamers against each other on the chessboard, Twitch Plays Catan features a mix of celebrities (like actor Khleo Thomas), creators (Twitch streamer Lunity), and athletes (Indiana Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith). There will be eight players in total, though only one will be dubbed the “ultimate Catan champion.”

The event’s name also references the Twitch Plays genre, in which viewers use chat messages to impact gameplay decisions. Twitch Plays Catan won’t be as chaotic as a typical crowdsourced stream, but the tournament will include some audience participation. Via Twitch chat, viewers will advise their favorite players as they consider in-game decisions like resource trades and settlement placements.

As if a mix of PogChamps and Twitch Plays Pokemon wasn’t ambitious enough on its own, Schwab is also leaning into the world of financial creators. Gen Z consumers have indicated that they see social media platforms as go-to sources for advice on money matters, and brands have leveraged that phenomenon by partnering with Twitch streamers. As Schwab’s Catan tournament plays out, the brand’s financial experts will draw links between the game’s resource management elements and real-world spending habits. I can’t wait to see which inefficient real-world assets get compared to Catan’s infamous sheep cards.

Michael Iachini, the Head of Manager Research at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, will host the event. “I think a lot of investors out there will be interested,” Iachini said in a statement. “And of course, I think a ton of gamers will check out this event when it comes up. I’m just so excited.”

Brand involvement has helped spur a revival of the web series format, especially in the world of finance. With that trend in mind, Schwab is taking a big swing. It is looking to produce a piece of sponsored content that revives a beloved pastime, capitalizes on the appeal of tabletop gaming, and offers salient financial advice, all at the same time. If you want to see how that combination plays out, head to the Twitch Plays Catan homepage starting at 6 PM ET on the two days of the tournament.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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