James Hale

• Last year, Nike embraced the metaverse. How’s that paying off?
• YouTube fills out free-to-watch roster with 100+ full TV series

  In a company blog post about the freebies, YouTube emphasized—as it often does, these days—that the number of people watching its content on their living room TVs continues to grow, hitting 135 million in December 2021.

  
• Creators On The Rise: Steven He got 3,000 rejections as an actor. So he decided to catch studios’ attention by going viral.

  He is an actor by trade, and despite graduting from Neighborhood Playhouse and securing an impressive roster of roles in over 60 stage productions, in 2020, he was racking up thousands of rejections. This is normal for the industry, he says. But also, he was tired of it.

  
• ‘Fortnite’ offered to donate proceeds to Ukraine humanitarian efforts. A day later, it’s raised $36 million.

  Fortnite took to Twitter this morning to reveal that in just over 24 hours, players’ purchases have already sent $36 million to UNICEF, the United Nations World Food Programme, refugee agency UNHCR, and Direct Relief.

  
• The ACE Family says they’re done YouTubing full-time. But before they go, pay $299 to meet them at their own festival.
• Facebook faces lawsuit over celebrity crypto scam ads
• Netflix really, really wants subscribers to stop sharing their passwords. So it’s letting them pay to add friends.
• YouTube Millionaires: Matthew Beem helped build MrBeast’s ‘Squid Game.’ Now his YouTube ambitions are bigger than ever.
• Creators On The Rise: Moms Ebony and Denise joined YouTube to share an emotional vlog about Barack Obama. Then their daughter stole the show.
• The Vanced app let users block YouTube ads and brought back the dislike button. Google wasn’t a fan.
• El Smosh returns with Spanish dubs of “fan-favorite” videos
• DrDisRespect settles permaban lawsuit with Twitch, parts ways for good