As digital-native creators harbor Hollywood dreams, a bonafide A-lister is taking her talents to Twitch. That’s the platform viewers can turn to to watch Keke Live, a talk show led by the versatile actor Keke Palmer.
Two decades after her breakout role in the film Akeelah and the Bee, Palmer is still an immense presence on the big screen. With nearly 15 million followers on Instagram, she also possesses a strong social following that will now form the base audience for her Twitch talk show.
In her inaugural Keke Live stream, Palmer cited creators like Kai Cenat and PlaqueBoyMax, whom she has interacted with on her journey toward Twitch stardom. “Y’all know your girl Keke likes to inspect every corner of the interwebs,” Palmer said. “This is the place to come to talk, laugh, and live, baby.”
Palmer is best known for her exploits in fields like film, TV, and pop music, and Keke Live gives her a chance to show off her range. At the same time, the new program allows her to explore her ongoing interest in internet culture. With her presence at tech demos and her status as driving force behind a digital network called Key TV, Palmer is no stranger to our neck of the woods. Now, as live programming like sports dominates TV screens, Palmer is testing whether Twitch can be a viable setting for a late night-quality talk show.
Along the way, she’ll celebrate the Black culture that’s bubbling up in the streaming community. Creators like Cenat and iShowSpeed have led a wave of Black streaming stars that also includes standouts like YourRAGE, Rakai, and Druski. The first Keke Live episode, which included a line dance and an “Afro-centric interior decoration history lesson,” showed that Palmer is eager to highlight Black excellence on Twitch.
It’s a great time for Palmer to be making such a bold cross-platform move. Recent deals — like the pact between Kylie Jenner and Night — have shown that there are fewer distinctions than ever before separating traditional celebrities from digital creators. In fact, no matter a creator’s origins, it seems as if everyone wants to be streaming these days, and Palmer’s contribution to that trend will contain her usual blend of charm and pizzazz.
With its latest acquisition, Fixated is moving its roster of creator partners into four-digit territory. The talent firm, which works with digital stars like Sketch and the Botez Sisters, has acquired the end-to-end creator company Studio71.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Studio71’s previous owner, the German mass media company ProSiebenSat.1, is only selling the company’s North American business to Fixated. Its operations in other territories, including its home country, will remain underneath its umbrella.
Even after many of the execs involved in that push moved on to new ventures, Studio71 continued to team up with big names from platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Its current roster includes Dhar Mann, Joey Graceffa, and Unspeakable, all of whom have picked up billions of views across their assorted channels.
By bringing that roster into its portfolio, Fixated will boast a thousand-strong creator lineup that generates billions of monthly views on major social platforms. That dominance is all part of the company’s plan. Earlier this year, Fixated co-founders Zach Katz and Jason Wilhelm told us that they intend to give the creator economy its “Avengers assemble” moment. By leveraging a $50 million funding round, Katz and Wilhelm are acquiring the assets that will make their company a must-have partner across all aspects of the creator career.
Previous acquisition targets have included gamer talent firm Ellify and creator subscription business Elevate. Now, by adding Studio71 to its portfolio, Fixated is joining forces with a company that’s well-versed in end-to-end creator operations. Studio71’s services have ranged from ad deals to scripted podcasts to merch lines, and that makes it a good fit within a company that wants creators to build their own media businesses.
“Creators stopped being influencers a long time ago. They’re building media companies, and the infrastructure to match that ambition has never existed — until now,” Katz said in a statement. “We built it. Fixated is the only company in the space with the end-to-end infrastructure to take a creator from first upload to nine-figure business without ever leaving the building. With Studio71 inside the tent, the company now operates with a scale, depth, and integrated capability set that the market has never seen. That’s the game. We’re playing it alone.”
Studio71 will operate as part of the Fixated platform moving forward. As for Fixated, its acquisition streak isn’t over yet. The firm says it has more targets in its sights, so keep an eye out for Katz and Wilhem’s next money moves.
YouTube wants more recognition from mainstream entertainment power players, so it’s sharing the love. The Google-owned hub has developed a tool that finds and manages AI-generated deepfakes of public figures, and Hollywood studios now have access to that software.
Now, the battle-tested tool is ready for its big moment. Google execs told The Hollywood Reporter that anyone “at high risk of having their likeness abused” can take advantage of the AI-powered detector. That group includes journalists and politicians, as well as entertainers like actors, musicians, creators, and athletes.
People who spot deepfaked versions of their likeness on YouTube can request access to the tool, even if they don’t have an active channel on the platform. “We’ve been working on this for quite some time since the genesis of thinking through AI tools and the implications on the platform,” YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe told THR. “Frankly, we have not seen the vectors that are even possible, and we are working very closely with talent agencies and third-party management companies to make sure that public figures can actually get ahead of this before something negative happens.”
For YouTube, bringing the likeness detection tool to studios serves as a proverbial olive branch. Traditional Hollywood entities are extremely skittish about AI, which was one of the major themes of the SAG and WGA strikes that gripped the industry two years ago. Deepfakes and other unauthorized AI representations of public figures threaten to harm celebs’ personal brands while simultaneously putting humans out of work.
Those fears made it difficult for OpenAI to make inroads in Hollywood, even after the ChatGPT maker talked to studios about its potential in the film and TV industries. The AI video generator Sora was a big part of OpenAI’s pitch to filmmakers, but the software has since shut down.
In theory, YouTube is just as much of a threat to the traditional Hollywood model as OpenAI is. The platform keeps rolling out products that make deepfakes easier and more efficient to produce, and much of the AI content that steals from filmmakers and actors can be found on YouTube. Many top creators are intentionally developing AI versions of their likeness, leaving the AI skeptics to grapple with the consequences of that rapid proliferation.
The likeness detection tool, however, shows that AI-powered products can help Hollywood. Even if creatives are against generative AI, YouTube is showing them that they can use the technology to their advantage.
Perhaps this move will convince studios that YouTube is an ally, not an adversary. That’s certainly what YouTube seems to want. After all, you can’t win Emmys without getting Hollywood’s approval first.
Miami marketing conference POSSIBLE is returning for its fourth year–and putting content creators in the spotlight.
Christian Muche, former AOL and Yahoo executive and the founder & Global President of POSSIBLE, tells Tubefilter his event has attracted a notable number of creators over the past three years.
“A lot of [brand] partners would bring creators onsite without them necessarily being onstage,” he explains. “People always talk about brands’ and marketers’ parts of the [advertising] industry, but creators are coming–they are part of the action onsite.”
So, for 2026, “We have a huge step forward, not just for us as a platform but for the entire industry,” he says. “Creators are part of the economy. They have to be there. They have to be involved in every discussion, on every layer.”
This year, POSSIBLE (taking place April 27-29 at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach and the Eden Roc Miami Beach) will offer its first Creator Economy Academy, an entire roster of programming that “dives into how marketers and brands can successfully collaborate with creators shaping today’s culture and conversation,” it says.
Creator Economy Academy sessions will cover topics like platform changes, generative AI, and the creator→media business pipeline, highlighting how digital creators and their content have notched a major presence across all areas of entertainment.
POSSIBLE is also offering an Ambassador program where creators are able to attend the event, with access to all its programming, for free. The trade-off is that to secure their spot, they must give POSSIBLE a recent monthly traffic report to prove they have a following. They must also be “committed to promoting POSSIBLE 2026 and amplifying the POSSIBLE experience.”
Muche says these developments are because he and the POSSIBLE team noticed creators building longer-term partnerships with brands; often these partnerships involve creators being involved in shaping campaigns’ messaging and overall creative vibes.
It only made sense, then, that creators should have a wider presence at POSSIBLE.
“Within the team and our partners and advisory board, we discuss a lot about creativity in general. How can creativity be more involved, and drive our agenda?” he says. “Creative agencies have been involved in POSSIBLE from the beginning on, but creativity, the word, that belongs to creators at large. They are creating content, coming up with storytelling. They are driving creativity in a new way.”
When it comes to brands and marketers, creators “offer a different perspective and procedures on how to create a campaign,” Muche says. “They provide storytelling, but also from a technical standpoint. [Embracing creators] gives us an opportunity, as a platform, to connect the right people at POSSIBLE, and also approach brands with new layers of creativity.”
Muche says everyone in his industry should look at creators as “another layer across everything,” and that smart advertisers are tapping in creators “in the very early days” so they are “part [of campaigns] from the beginning to the end.”
To that end, POSSIBLE’s lineup of 100+ speakers includes dozens of creators and creator industry experts, like…
Dhar Mann (Creator)
Brittany Broski (Creator)
Issa Rae (Creator)
Charlamagne tha God (Creator)
Kat Stickler (Creator)
Ziad Ahmed (Head of Next Gen, UTA)
Beau Avril (SVP of Global Media & Brand Partnerships, MrBeast)
Nicholas Spiro (CCO, Viral Nation)
Adam Faze (Co-founder, Gymnasium)
Tim Chau (Co-founder/CEO, Impact Media)
and Caden Cox (Influencer Marketing Development, Creator IQ)
Muche says POSSIBLE’s Creator Economy Academy sessions are designed to be more intimate and interactive than your typical onstage panel discussions, and adds that event organizers hope “brands and marketers use the opportunity to meet and work with creators they don’t know yet.”
He also wants attending brands to go in thinking. “It would be interesting to figure out, what is the currency for creators and for brands? Is it still producing a supply of content which generates the attention you want? Well, the creators own the attention,” he says. “Is this a kind of currency? Will this end in a more trustful relationship to consumers? I think this is helpful for brands and creators to think about. I would love to see these kinds of discussions.”
In addition to the Creator Economy Academy, POSSIBLE (presented this year by Google, Pinterest, Salesforce, and Walmart Connect) is offering sessions on topics like data analytics & measurement strategies, Gen Z & emerging social trends, social impact & purpose-driven business, AI and how it’s affecting adtech, and startups & entrepreneurship.
For 2025’s event, POSSIBLE welcomed more than 5,400 attendees, and expects to surpass that number this year. Folks who can’t make it to Miami, however, will still be able to catch some of POSSIBLE’s programming thanks to YouTube, the event’s official livestream partner. Select keynote sessions and mainstage programming will stream on POSSIBLE’s YouTube channel and website.
Filed under: Events, Homepage Feature by Tubefilter Staff Comments Off on Dhar Mann, Brittany Broski, Issa Rae, and more: Miami marketing conference POSSIBLE is putting the spotlight on our industry with its new Creator Economy Academy
Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.
We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.
And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here. You can also download our YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Reporthere.
MrBeast and Lucie Fink each take two videos in this week’s top 5, with a little alliteration in their sponsor names: Shopify and Sam’s Club.
We have an interesting dichotomy here. With MrBeast, he’s continuing to make 2026 his year of ubersprawling video ideas, all with enormous amounts of money involved. And with Fink, she’s racking up over 30 million views with #relatable budget shopping. On opposite ends of the $$$ spectrum, they’re both dominating for views.
MrBeast is on a tear. He started 2026 by getting 30 celebrities to fight for $1 million, and now he’s got 50 of the biggest streamers fighting for the same amount. Ludwig, Pokimane, Ibai, Fanum, Quackity, Inoxtag, YourRage, Tfue, Agent00 and more all gathered to face his dastardly gauntlet of challenges.
And, of course, a video with this much star power is a shoo-in for spot #1 on this week’s list. To date, the competition has racked up nearly 100 million views–and every view went not just to MrBeast, but to his longtime partner Shopify. Shopify continues to be one of the most prolific sponsors on YouTube; this week alone, it sponsored nearly 40 videos…including #2.
MrBeast might be known for his extremely ideated, extremely polished VODs, but sometimes he does in fact go live. This three-hour stream ties into video #1, and follows the final four contestants–Rubius, YourRage, Rakai, and Ski Mask the Slump God–through their last challenges to see who will walk away with a cool $1 mil to give away to their viewers.
This format may sound familiar, because it popped up in MrBeast’s #1 video for last week’s report, too. While many of his non-celeb competitors end up winning cash for themselves, with competitions like this, MrBeast targets viewers as the ultimate winners. It’s a solid PR strat: Viewers tune in to see if their favorite streamer wins, and the streamer can (ideally) make a much-watched event out of divvying up the milli between their fans.
And, once again, Shopify benefits, grabbing a further 35 million views for its ecom offerings.
Lucie Fink and Sam’s Club want you to head home with all the essentials…and then some. In this double set of videos (#3 and #4), their goal is showing how easy it is to keep picking up item after item off Sam’s Club’s shelves.
First up is this minute-long clip featuring Fink’s husband doing her voiceover. It’s a popular trend, largely in the fashion & beauty space, but it works well for an ad, because as Fink is touring the Club, excitedly grabbing tins of olives and flowers for a girls’ night, her husband has a sort of droll and ironic sales-y delivery with a touch of occasional whimsy. The combo feels more like an ad than a lot of sponcon, but in a charming way. It’s not hard to see why…….
….Sam’s Club signed a multi-video partnership with Fink and her family. Much like video #3, this Short follows the Finks as they make a “quick pit stop” at Sam’s Club, only to end up finding a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t on their list.
As a person who buys groceries on a budget, I can safely say this is a relatable occurrence. Sometimes that container of pomegranate-crusted cashews just catches your eye and then you end up spending an extra ten bucks, y’know? And Sam’s Club’s real goal here is to show off the breadth of its offerings–how you can just stop for road trip snacks, but you could also find whatever you need to “refresh your entire house for spring,” as Fink puts it.
People have tighter wallets these days, so we’re curious if these sorts of videos are resonating. Views don’t lie, though: This has 15 million, and Sam’s also clinched spots #9 and #11 this week thanks to two videos from another partner, Johnny Morales.
Yo dawg, I heard you like ads, so I put an ad in your ad.
Is that meme still funny in 2026 or are we just old?
Anyway, the bonus vid for this week caught my eye thanks to its title. That title, in the holy land of YouTube, where titles reign supreme? Where LinkedIn creator economy gurus agonize for hours over whether using “a” or “the” will get more eyeballs?
Now, granted, this is a Short, so nobody is choosing to watch it based on the title, nor seeing the title pop up directly on the video. So the uploader is using it as a disclosure section. But the other interesting thing here is that the uploader isn’t an individual creator–it’s a brand: private jet charter company Amalfi Jets. Amalfi makes a lot of social content (~15M views per month, according to Gospel), and that’s the ticket for corporate money management service Ramp.
The two companies have been partnered for a while, and this 34-second upload is Amalfi’s typical scripted style, promoting Ramp as the solution to company audits. It makes sense as a mesh, considering the financial prestige associated with private jets.
…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you like our Weekly Top 5, you’ll love everything else Gospel has to offer. Start with our newly released YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Report, which you can download right here.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart. 👇
There’s a new #1 channel in the Global Sub Top 50 chart. By adopting the bright color palette and upbeat tone that drives so many Eastern European YouTube channels, BRUNO became the most-subscribed channel of the week. The Ukrainian creator added 1.1 million new subs during the third week of April.
Alejo Igoa and MrBeast followed next as the only other channels to get at least one million new subs during the week that was. To crack the Global Sub Top 50, channels needed to add at least 300,000 new subscribers during our most recent measurement period.
You can use a movie release schedule to predict the next big characters on Shorts.
Anyone who believes that film is dead has not been paying attention to YouTube Shorts. The biggest films of the moment don’t just make millions at the box office — they also show up in some of the most-watched short-form videos in the world.
We saw this phenomenon on full display last year, when KPop Demon Hunters was both the hottest movie of the moment and the most common topic among channels in our Top 50 charts. A few months later, a new Sonic the Hedgehog movie made the gaming world’s favorite speedster into a popular dress-up choice.
Flash forward to April 2026, and the big hit at the multiplex is a literal blockbuster: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The sequel to a popular 2023 video game adaptation has already made more than $700 million at the box office, certifying that Nintendo’s most iconic franchise is also dominant across other media.
Mario’s recent return has helped him 1UP the competition on YouTube Shorts. Some creators, like Peru’s Arista Viva, are adding the mustachioed hero to videos that have nothing to do with video games, movies, or plumbing. That strategy is working like a charm. Arista Viva just jumped up to 11th place in the Global Sub Top 50 thanks to a weekly uptick of about 500,000 new subscribers. Now that’s what I call a Mega Mushroom.
“Random franchise character” is set up to be the next big trend on YouTube Shorts. Creators like Arista Viva are realizing that shoehorning in as many memes as possible — whether they relate to drawing, pets, or movies — is the easiest path to millions of Shorts views.
Major studios are playing along, too. They’re bringing their characters to digital platforms in a way that encourages short-form mashups from independent creators. If so-called “kidslop” is a viable movie marketing tactic, why wouldn’t film distributors take advantage of it?
Some creators are already getting ahead of the next big movie-inspired trends. The trailer for the upcoming Street Fighter reboot has been all over the internet this week, and sketch comedians have dusted off the costumes they need to buy into the film’s promotional cycle.
Consider Akira, a Japanese creator who reached 20th place in this week’s Global Sub Top 50. Though Akira’s videos are all over the place tonally, he often features a Ken costume in his most viral clips. Looks like someone’s ready for the Street Fighter reboot.
Data via Gospel Stats
Perhaps, by the time Street Fighter actually returns to theaters, Akira’s trip in the Global Sub Top 50 will be a distant memory. There’s no guarantee that any particular movie will stick in the zeitgeist the way KPop Demon Hunters did.
Some franchises, however, are likely candidates for short-form memery. If you like Mortal Kombat, Marvel movies, or Homer’s The Odyssey, consider some additions to your YouTube Shorts repertoire, because 2026’s biggest tentpoles are likely to have a widespread impact.
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
India: 11
United States: 8
Brazil: 4
Argentina and Mexico: 3
Peru, Russia, and Ukraine: 2
Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany,Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and United Arab Emirates: 1
This week, 42 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all our news by subscribing to our newsletter. You’re going to love it. 👉 Newsletter.Tubefilter.com.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart. 👇
BabyBillion is one week away from a two-month run of uninterrupted dominance in the Global Top 50. The family-friendly hub from India has gotten the most views of any YouTube channel in the world for seven weeks in a row, and it added to that streak by picking up 1.1 billion weekly views during our most recent measurement period.
The top five channels in the chart all collected at least 794 million weekly views during the third week of April. Four of those channels are from India, which remains the most dominant channel in our rankings.
Will India’s updated news rules affect its surging creators?
In case you haven’t noticed, India has been the biggest thing on YouTube for months now. BabyBillion has been the undisputed #1 in this chart since February, the top ten is filled with South Asian tastemakers, and more than half of the channels in the Top 50 hail from India.
Though India has typically traded places with the U.S. as the most common country in the Global Top 50, current events in 2026 have tipped those scales toward Asia. The war in Iran has had a profound effect on the Indian economy, and many citizens in the world’s most populous nation have been turning to YouTube to consume the latest dispatches from the conflict.
Some public entities have hopped on the YouTube bandwagon as well. The Central Bureau of Communication popped into the Global Top 50 earlier this year, and it continues to reach millions with updates that come directly from the Indian government.
This week, those videos collected 305.2 million weekly views, leading the Central Bureau of Communication to a 43rd-place finish in the Global Top 50. The most-watched short-form upload from the channel’s archive is an appeal to women’s empowerment with more than 226 million total views.
Long story short, it’s a good time to be an Indian outlet that dispenses PSAs on YouTube. That “meta,” however, could be about to change. Recent reports suggest that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology could adjust India’s IT rules by requiring independent news creators to submit to the same oversight that applies to publisher-based content.
Free speech advocates are worried that the changes could affect creators’ ability to report on Indian news without interference from national power brokers. But how would the new rules affect our charts?
On one hand, you could argue that independent news creators aren’t making nearly the same impact in India that publishers are. Channels like the Central Bureau of Communication get more traffic than individual sources for public service announcements and news.
The truth, however, is that all Indian channels have been affected by the surging consumption of news content. Keshav Shahi Vlogsis not a political channel (it’s one of many Indian family vlogs in the Top 50), but it has neared its weekly viewership peak over the past few months, as other Indian channels have risen alongside it.
Data via Gospel Stats
Keshav Shashi Vlogs got 317.1 million weekly views during the third week of April, earning itself a 36th-place finish in the process. The family hub hasn’t seen traffic like that since last November.
Perhaps the proposed reporting rules won’t push national publishers out of the Top 50, but they could cause an overall dip in Indian YouTube traffic. If fewer creators are encouraged to share the news with their subscribers, how many viewers does that leave for the family vlogs?
Channel Distribution
Here’s a breakdown of the Top 50 Most Viewed channels this week in terms of their countries of origin:
India: 26
United States: 6
Canada: 3
Vietnam: 2
Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan: 1
This week, 40 channels in the Top 50 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.
As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all our news by subscribing to our newsletter. You’re going to love it. 👉 Newsletter.Tubefilter.com.
On April 18, the Sidemen and their creator friends returned to London for the 2026 edition of their charity soccer match. For the second year in a row, the star-studded footballing spectacle raised more money than any previous edition of the event. A sum of £6.2 million (~$8.4 million) will be split between a pair of nonprofit organizations.
The Sidemen, who count 23 million subscribers on their primary YouTube channel, sold enough charity match tickets to fill the 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium to capacity. Those fortunate in-person attendees were joined by massive audience of live viewers. At its peak, according to Streams Charts, the 2026 Sidemen match reached 2.2 million concurrent viewers.
The millions-strong viewership put pressure on the Sidemen and their opponents — the YouTube All-Stars — to deliver. The match did not disappoint. Members of the Sidemen switched between the two teams, keeping them evenly matched throughout a back-and-forth game. Highlights included Tobi‘s trivela goal from a free kick (there’s a reason he was once offered a trial at a pro club), Max Fosh‘s yellow card magic trick, and a rare save from xQc, who stopped JasonTheWeen‘s penalty shot.
The final score of 10-10 led to a penalty shootout, where the YouTube All-Stars earned a rare win over their Sidemen foes. Tech critic Mrwhosetheboss delivered the winning kick to send his side into a frenzy.
The biggest winners were the two organizations that split the £6.2 million fundraising total. 86% of that sum will go to the Sidemen’s Bright Side charity, while the remaining 14% will go to M7 Education.
The VOD version of the 2026 charity match live stream has already picked up more than 11 million views on YouTube. “Thank you guys so much! This year we raised a record breaking £6,218,875 with all profits going to charity,” reads a YouTube comment attributed to the Sidemen. “This wouldn’t be possible without you guys, the best community in the world! THANK YOU”
The key to the match’s success, however, may be as simple as the sport of choice. An open soccer field provides plenty of opportunities for one-off cameos, and collaborating with a bunch of famous creators is a solid strategy for achieving seven-digit live viewership.
Star-studded soccer matches revive the spirit of an earlier YouTube era, when networks and partnerships fostered camaraderie among creators. The biggest YouTube and Twitch streams are bringing influencers together on a grand scale, and that’s one of the things the Sidemen do best. Can they go even bigger in 2027?
Filed under: Articles, Charity, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, Sports by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Sidemen soccer match raises £6.2 million, draws 2.2 million concurrent viewers during 20-goal thriller
The iconic sandbox video game will have a serious spotlight at this year’s TwitchCon Rotterdam, running May 30-31 at the Rotterdam Ahoy complex in the Netherlands.
Twitch has partnered with developer Mojang Studios to offer an entire dedicated Minecraft area and a slate of programming. Attendees will be able to walk through a life-sized version of Minecraft with different interactive biomes, plus see a live rendition of Tubbo‘s speedrunning tournament, The Midoffs, presented by the man himself.
The Midoffs won’t be the only competition: TwitchCon Rotterdam is also hosting MC Championship: Project G.L.O.P., which appears to be an official Twitch Rivals head-to-head.
Programming additionally includes a community meetup, a deep dive into the happenings of the highly competitive Lifesteal server, “and more,” TwitchCon and Minecraft promised in a shared Instagram post.
Minecraft is showing up at TwitchCon… in a big way. You don’t want to miss out on what we have planned.
There aren’t many more details about what exactly fans can expect, but more details will probably become available over the next month, in the lead-up to the convention.
As for why TwitchCon Rotterdam is going all-in on Minecraft, a certain global phenomenon (and much-memed) film might play a role. But even without Jack Black Steve hamming up the big screen, Minecraft is one of the biggest games on the internet. It’s gotten more than a trillion views on YouTube alone, and has remained one of the platform’s most-uploaded and most-watched titles, despite buzzy other entrants like Fortniteand Roblox.
We get the appeal: Minecraft truly has something for everyone. It can be a cutthroat competition, a terse survival thriller, or a cortisol-lowering dig-hole simulator. And thanks to modders, there are virtually no limits to what players can concoct these days.
Folks interested in catching Minecraft at TwitchCon Rotterdam can still get tickets here. You can pick up a single-day pass for €75; two-day passes are €125.
Filed under: Homepage Feature, Uncategorized by James Hale Comments Off on Minecraft is bringing life-sized biomes to TwitchCon Rotterdam–plus a Tubbo competition, community hangout, and more
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, a popular streamer was outed for past indiscretions, New York City’s mayor kicked a shoutout to a creator operation, and Tax Day arrived — whether you were ready for it or not.
Creator commotion
As shocking allegations fly, Sykkuno’s past catches up to him. In his streams with the Offline TV crew, Sykkuno projected the persona of a shy, quiet introvert. But this week, several women told a different story when they accused Sykkuno of using his fame and status to manipulate them. In a statement, Sykkuno apologized — most of all to his girlfriend — for his “unfaithful” behavior. He has pledged to take an indefinite break from streaming.
Alex and Alix are (still) fighting. Ms. Cooper and Ms. Earle seemed to be at odds when the latter creator split from the former’s Unwell Network. Cooper then stirred up more drama by accusing Earle of “passive-aggressive” behavior, and she demanded that the TikTok star air out her grievances. Earle’s response: “Okay on it!!”
Johnny Somali gets six months of prison time for pranks gone wrong. Somali was arrested in South Korea after his public disturbances made light of the nation’s fractured relationship with North Korea. His upcoming time in the clink is a lesson for all creators: Sometimes, acting like a boor in East Asia doesn’t go as well for you as it did for Logan Paul.
Pop culture minute
Zohran Mamdani says Sidetalk inspired his iconic campaign videos. The Mayor of the Big Apple was the first guest on We Outside, a new interview podcast from Sidetalk. During his appearance, Mamdani noted that Sidetalk’s direct, man-on-the-street style inspired the social media videos that helped the former Assemblyman clinch the mayorship. And with another Knicks playoff run coming up, Sidetalk is about to get even more shine.
AMC launched its Silicon Valley-set series on TikTok. The Audacity is a new drama that dives into the world of tech startups. Given that focus, an activation on TikTok is a sensible promotional strategy, and that’s exactly what AMC did. Watching the Audacity pilot on TikTok in 21 parts may not be as fluid as traditional TV, but it’s definitely the kind of thing a startup founder would do.
ShowUp Studios wants to, well, show up for Gen Z on YouTube and TikTok. The new content studio is seeking pre-seed funding after announcing its plan to bring free, original programming to twentysomething consumers across major social networks. When I say ShowUp has big plans, I mean it — the studio wants to produce 4,500 episodes over its first five years.
The biz
Yonna learned the hard way that April 15 was Tax Day. The Twitch streamer panicked after learning that she had to file her taxes before the deadline and couldn’t just do it whenever she felt like it. Yonna said multiple times that she will be “going to jail” as a result of her tax evasion, but I think she can slow her roll. It’s not like she’s Johnny Somali or anything.
Hank and John Green’s Complexly costs $5,000 per minute. That figure comes from Complexly CEO Julie Walsh Smith, who revealed just how expensive educational content can be. The Vlogbrothers are planning to make Complexly more viable by turning it into a nonprofit, but let this blurb serve as your reminder that even the biggest creators could use a little bit of your support from time to time.
Kohl’s is sweetening the deal for its creator partners. To offset difficult economic conditions, Kohl’s is telling the members of its creator program that they can earn commissions on every sale while taking advantage of perks like free products and early access to deals. And to make things even better, the retailer’s cohort of 1,500 nano-creators don’t even have to be paid in Kohl’s Cash.
Movers and shakers
Khartoon Weiss’ next move turned out to be Google all along. Weiss sent shockwaves through the ad world when she would step down from her post as TikTok’s top North American ad exec. For her next move, Weiss is joining Google as its Vice President of US Mid Market Sales and Commerce. To remind yourself how much gravitas Google has, ask yourself this question: How many times has a top Google exec defected to a rival company rather than the other way around?
Tara Walpert Levy is saying goodbye to Google. As one ad exec arrives at the Googleplex, another is departing. For 15 years, Walpert Levy was a mainstay at YouTube events like Brandcast and NewFronts. Now, she’s moving on to obtain something even more powerful: Per her LinkedIn, she will have “the freedom to choose what comes next.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s replacement in Meta meetings is AI Mark Zuckerberg. The big boss of the company formerly known as Facebook is reportedly training an AI doppelganger that will be able to stand in for him during meetings. Come on, Zuck. If you’re going to get out of those boring meetings, you should share the love. The rest of us deserve our own AI representatives, too.
The internet is a strange place
The Sykkuno drama got the anime treatment thanks to Justin Briner. As the English voice of My Hero Academia character Deku, Briner has perfected the “boyish anime protagonist” sound. I don’t know why applying that voice to a disgraced streamer’s statement is so funny, but I’m definitely not the only person on the internet who got a kick out of this little distraction.
Horse racing might be the weirdest sport to have a “creator moment.” Thanks to platforms like TikTok, the Grand National horse race enjoyed a sellout crowd, with many members of Gen Z in attendance. Going to a horse race is the perfect vehicle for a “get ready with me” video, but in this sport, creators should be very careful before they start collaborating with the (equine) athletes.
YouTube has taken action against the pro-Iran AI Lego channel. The unique news hub has been removed from YouTube, according to the group behind it (which goes by the name Explosive Media). The absurd Lego depictions of Trump’s executive orders were as surreal as they sound, and if they really are gone, they will be missed.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Have you heard? Sykkuno’s bad behavior, Mamdani’s Sidetalk inspo, and a Tax Day surprise.
Back in the very early 2000s, deviantART was a tentpole of digital fandom. All sorts of fans–from Fullmetal Alchemist enjoyers, Harry Potter lovers, and Star Trek enthusiasts to Transformers aficionados, Supernatural brethren, and even the early Marvel Cinematic Universe stans–gathered there to share, see, and discuss fanart (and sometimes fanfics, too, though those had more of a home over on Fanfiction.net and LiveJournal).
Fast forward to the early 2020s, though, and things looked quite different. Tumblr‘s 2007 introduction was the start of what deviantART itself calls a “slow bleed” of traffic loss. Between 2013 and 2019, dA’s overall engagement dropped ~43%.
The company wanted to staunch this bleed, grow its userbase, and start making more money. So, it overhauled the dA website, removed third-party ads entirely, and tried “building a real creator economy powered by a true creative network” with a focus on creator monetization,” CEO Moti Levywrote in a recent post.
There was just one problem. As dA pushed into our industry and pitched itself as a haven for artists to make money from their work, it also embraced generative AI. Not only did it decide to allow generated works, it also released its own generator: “DreamUp,” running on Stable Diffusion bones.
“The team interviewed hundreds of Deviants to understand creators’ thoughts, pains, fears, and needs with regards to A.I. art,” Levy said at the time. “DreamUp lets you create A.I. art knowing that creators’ work is treated fairly.”
But Levy says any claim that dA has lost artists and/or that it’s dying is “a convenient web troll narrative” that’s “also dead wrong.”
“Let’s address this ridiculous nonsense once and for all. There has been no ‘downfall of DeviantArt,’ nor any mass exodus,” he wrote in January 2026. “Quite the opposite; today, the community is larger than ever. Around the time of the Wix acquisition, we had roughly 36 million registered users. Now, we’re approaching 110 million–more than 3X growth in our user base.”
Now, dA is on the charm offensive with a sponcon post in ARTnews that says in 2025 alone, “DeviantArt creators made $23 million in sales–12 times that of 2022, and more than the previous five years of sales combined.”
It says a chunk of that revenue is driven by its Subscriptions feature, which lets artists offer up to 10 paid tiers for viewers to unlock extra content, Q&As, live drawing streams, etc.
dA also boasts that its platform fees/cut of artists’ earnings is “as low as 2.5%,” and cites case studies of creators like @Sakurai-Outfit-Adopt, who draws adoptable characters and sold “over $14,000 in less than a year.”
“Today, DeviantArt makes money when our artists make money,” Levy said. “We’re betting on our artists, the way a true creative network should.”
He added, “After years of foundational work, and after proving both the network momentum and the creator economy, we’re entering a new phase with no constraints. We’ve leveled up and are ready for this stage.”
Will we see deviantART be a creator economy force alongside YouTube and TikTok in 2026? Thousands of artists are looking for a new home platform after X’s descent into Grokland–but will they be willing to make money on a website that is still doggedly pro-AI? Levy makes it very clear dA is not only going to continue with AI, but is also pretty smug about its position on the matter.
“Boy, we got A LOT of heat,” he said about dA introducing AI. “But, we were also 100% right. Since then, we have been seeing waves of new creators leveraging this tech and co-existing with traditional digital artists, and the lines between them are starting to blur. We have no plans to stop and will continue to champion all our creators, whatever tools or tech they use in their creative process (obviously as long as they abide by our policy and the law).”
Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale Comments Off on deviantART says artists made $23 million on its platform last year, boasts that it was “100% right” to embrace generative AI
YouTube still wants its users to keep things brief, but it’s reimagining the tools that cut videos down to size. A feature called Clips, which gave viewers the power to pull short-form segments from their favorite videos, is being discontinued. In its place, creators will be able to generate clips via YouTube Studio.
Thanks to the popularity of short-form feeds, clipping has become an important tactic for creators big and small. As a result, numerous third-party services have emerged to streamline and monetize clipping. The brands buying into that industry range from OpusClip to MrBeast.
YouTube hasn’t ignored the rise of clipping, and it even built a content shelf to hold short-form segments that originated on long-form streams. At the same time, the expansion of the clipping industry affected YouTube’s plans. According to a statement from the platform, there are “a number of third-party tools with advanced clipping features” that will seamlessly replace the bygone Clips feature.
Instead, YouTube is pivoting toward Shorts. Creators can already repurpose their content to fit the Shorts format, and that process is getting an upgrade. Video Clips on Shorts will arrive “later this year,” and when it does, creators will be able to make existing Shorts even shorter.
“We are focused on launching more clipping tools for creators in 2026. Video Clips is available in Studio today, allowing you to republish clips from longer videos and archived live streams,” reads a YouTube support page. “Later this year, we will be rolling out Video Clips to Shorts, and launching auto-suggestions to help you identify your most ‘clippable’ moments.”
The reshuffling of the clipping interface is part of a broader shift that will make timestamp-based tools the easiest way for viewers to spread shareable moments. The “Share at Timestamp” option is coming to mobile devices, letting on-the-go users send a clip over to their friends. Timestamps are useful for long-form creators, and they even have some value in the monetization department, so YouTube has a lot of reasons to increase its investment in that part of its interface.
The main losers from this change are the fans who turned clipping into a profitable side hustle. YouTube’s response, as previously mentioned, is to direct those enterprising fans toward any number of third-party solutions. Clipping is still a big deal on YouTube, but the methods used to take that action are about to look quite different.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on YouTube reshuffles clipping by removing viewer options while bringing Clips to Shorts
