In Shorts, YouTube reels in a shot at TikTok

I Finally Get to Worry Darling

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, following me on Twitter, or have the misfortune of knowing me IRL, you know that I’m obsessed with the drama around Don’t Worry Darling. I’ve been looking forward to watching this likely train wreck of a film for weeks, and today the wait is over. If it’s surprisingly good or bad in a noteworthy way, expect a non-Thursday update with my thoughts. 

Hopefully, they have Aperol Spritz available at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Platform Updates

Meta 

• Meta Announces Facebook Reels API to Enable Reels Sharing via Third Party Apps

TikTok

• TikTok takes aim at political grifting and fundraising in latest policy tweaks

• Inside Penguin Random House’s play to reach avid readers on TikTok’s BookTok

• How TikTok Has Bent Its Rules For Its Top Creators

YouTube

• YouTube's Updating Its Ad Format to Better Sell You Stuff on Vertical Videos

• YouTube’s Looking to Provide Direct Monetization for Shorts, a Big Shift in the Short-Form Content Battle (this is far more likely to draw creators away from TikTok than anything Meta is doing to Instagram to prop up Reels)

• YouTube encourages creators to make Shorts directly from comments

• YouTube channels will get more access to songs than ever before. Welcome to Creator Music.

Twitch 

• Twitch is banning major gambling websites in October

• Twitch is getting rid of the 70/30 revenue split

Snap 

• Snapchat Adds New Engagement Features, Announced Expanded Launch of Snapchat for Web

• Here are the first 25 Black creators who will receive $10,000 per month from Snap

Culture Movers 

Misc Platform Analysis 

• How platforms turn boring - a great piece from The Verge on how the mix of content styles on a platform shape it’s role in culture  

Publishing

• Spotify Launches Audiobooks Business With a la Carte Pricing, No Discounts for Subscribers

Gaming 

• Grand Theft Auto 6 Leaks: Everything That's Happened So Far

• Enormous Diablo IV Leak Shows Almost 45 Minutes Of Dungeon Crawling Footage

Lotta YouTube Stuff 

I’ve long thought of YouTube Shorts as late to the party that Instagram Reels started by being late to TikTok’s vertical video party. But I might have to adjust my ranking of vertical video platforms after this month. 

First, there’s the news that Reels isn’t going well. Low engagement from creators, a lot of the content is originally from TikTok, and users kinda hate the changes being made to push it.

Next, we have the big update to Shorts monetization that YouTube announced this week. Ads are coming to Shorts next year. They’ll run in between videos. Revenue from those ads will get pooled together, and a percentage will be distributed to creators based on viewership. YouTube monetization isn’t perfect, and creators have already started pointing out issues we can expect from this new model for shorts. But YouTube has consistently been much better about creator monetization than its peer platforms. 

Attracting creators and keeping them on your platform is gonna be essential for all three of these companies. Being a creator at that scale is a business. Platforms that make it easy for creators to directly earn money from their work on-platform have a big advantage. But keeping creators on your side is just one part of the equation; you also need to attract audiences and ad dollars. 

That’s where TikTok’s algorithm gives them a powerful edge and where I’m worried YouTube is most lacking. To be blunt, my YouTube recommendations suck. Before they made some very important changes to their algorithm, it was a running joke that if you left auto-play on long enough, you’d eventually get directed to some far-right radicalization content. Thankfully they’ve taken steps to address that worst-case scenario, but YouTube recommendations still don’t feel relevant. Not in the way most of my For You Page does. 

I’m not the only one seeing this. Mozilla recently published a study looking at YouTube’s recommendation system. Their analysis found that YouTube’s own feedback tools – disliking a video or marking it as not interesting – do basically nothing to inform what the platform shows you next. They’ll keep showing you videos similar to ones you’ve said you don’t like.

That said, TikTok’s ads kinda suck. As a user, I find they are frequently irrelevant. In my limited experience using their ad platform as a marketer, I found the tools and effectiveness there lacking compared to other social ad networks. 

So the way I see it, the race to be the long-term dominant platform for vertical video is on. But each platform is running a slightly different course. TikTok has the audience and algorithm but needs to step up the monetization game for creators and make improvements to their ad product. YouTube is likely ahead on the creator monetization but needs to build the algorithm and engagement features needed to keep an audience watching Shorts. Meta has a powerful ad product but needs to work on everything else to stay competitive.   

Court 👀

I don’t really have a unique point of view on this one yet, but it does feel like an important development to keep an eye on. Earlier this year, Texas passed a law that would effectively make it impossible for social media sites to do any kind of moderation. It’s the “own the libs” dog catching the “making the internet unusable” car. A district court found it was unconstitutional, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, and now this thing is likely going to the Supreme Court. 

[long redacted rant about the legitimacy of many Supreme Court Justices that isn’t relevant for the point here] 

Content moderation is essential for running a healthy online community or social platform. It’s a critical part of keeping any space from being overrun by harassment, spam, extremely violent imagery, sexual abuse material, terrorist recruitment, and any number of other types of content the vast majority of users don’t want to see. The internet under this law, or a similar court ruling, would be radically different from the one we use today. So this is one to keep an eye on.