| If you're finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! Ann here. When ShopMy first launched in 2020, it looked a lot like the popular creator startup LTK. Both help creators to set up personalized links to shopping pages they could share on social media sites, giving them a way to earn commissions from brands by promoting products. ShopMy, whose backers include Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp, initially focused on signing up creators and generated revenue by taking a cut of sales when shoppers made purchases through its links. But as the startup grew, brands started asking for a way to connect directly with creators and influencers, cofounder and CEO Harry Rein said, prompting ShopMy to start adding tools it could sell to brands. Now ShopMy offers a range of ways for brands to connect with creators and to track how well their campaigns do, charging a monthly subscription fee for the services. For example, a brand can search on ShopMy for creators that have posted about their products before, reach out to them via chat to arrange discount codes or a shipment of free products, then monitor the performance of creators' posts. ShopMy currently works with 75,000 creators, including Alix Earle and Paige DeSorbo, and nearly 50,000 brands and retailers, including Shopbop, Net-a-porter, Nike and Lululemon. It generates the majority of its revenue from the subscription fees it charges to brands, and that revenue is growing quickly. ShopMy is on track for roughly $20 million in revenue in 2024, up from around $4 million in 2023, and is facilitating more than $1 million worth of shopper purchases per day. The startup, which is now operating on a breakeven basis, also recently celebrated its first creator topping $1 million in total earnings from ShopMy, Rein said. "We're not building a tool for creators, we're not building a tool for brands—we're building a great tool for both," Rein said. "Unless you have that underlying network, almost all the magic of the tool doesn't exist, and there are actually not that many people that have proven an ability to build a network at scale." Wooing brands as well as creators has helped ShopMy edge in on turf long dominated by LTK, formerly known as Like To Know It. LTK launched in 2011 when founder Amber Venz Box wanted an easier way to make money from recommending products on her fashion blog, and raised $300 million from SoftBank at a $2 billion valuation in late 2021. LTK doesn't disclose its revenue, but Venz Box said in September the company will facilitate around $5 billion in sales this year and is profitable. At the same time, LTK has also been branching out beyond its initial focus on links and simple shopping pages. But it's taking a different approach than ShopMy: instead of focusing on tools for brands, it's trying to make its app, where users can browse posts from creators and the products they feature, into more of a destination for shoppers as opposed to something they stumble on from other sites. This year, LTK has added features like a TikTok-esque video feed, as well as commenting and notifications about new posts and deals. Here's what else is going on… See The Information's Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. YouTube announced several updates to Shorts, including longer videos up to three minutes long and the ability to "remix" clips from other Shorts creators and YouTube videos.Starting later this year, users will also be able to use Veo, DeepMind's generative video model, to create backgrounds and video clips Podimo, a podcast and audiobook streaming service focused on Europe and Latin America, acquired Podads, a Danish podcast and advertising agency. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Wondery, Amazon's podcast studio, is launching a line of toys based on its popular "Wow in the World" podcast for kids, hosted by Guy Raz. The launch is part of a broader push by Nicole Blake, the company's head of franchise development, to create products and events based on popular Wondery shows. The European Commission requested information from YouTube, Snap and TikTok about how their algorithms recommend content to users and the potential effects of those decisions on mental health, as well as other potential risks to safety and elections. Vivian Tu, known to her followers as Your Rich BFF, struck a partnership with Vox Media and PS, formerly PopSugar, to launch a second season of her "Networth and Chill" wealth and personal finance podcast. Bonkers Toys and Invisible Narratives, a studio that allows creators to license their intellectual property, partnered to launch a line of toys based on the Skibidi Toilet animated YouTube series, which has racked up more than 65 billion views. Explore Minnesota, the state's tourism department, has started paying influencers and content creators to highlight their travels across the state, paying one creator $5,000 to create 12 social media posts. Andrew Yaffe, a former NBA executive, has joined Dude Perfect as CEO. Dude Perfect began as a YouTube channel featuring trick shots and has since expanded to include live touring events, merchandise and a documentary. Monica Khan has left her role as executive vice president of creator experience at Spotter, a firm that provides funding to YouTube creators, she wrote in a LinkedIn post this week. Khan, who joined Spotter in 2022, has also held creator partnership roles at Meta and Google. Beatriz Miller is joining Moonbug Entertainment, the company behind CoComelon and Blippi, Moonbug announced Thursday. Miller was previously part of Netflix's global strategy and operations team. WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic, WordPress's parent company, alleging that Mullenweg and Automattic failed to uphold their promises to run open-source WordPress projects and give developers freedom to work with the software. Mullenweg has argued that WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress software, infringed on WordPress trademarks and failed to offer users core WordPress functions. Terryon Thomas, who has nearly 4 million TikTok followers on his Mr Prada account, was arrested after a traffic stop on charges including suspicion of aggravated criminal damage to property, resisting an officer and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana posted on Facebook about the traffic stop, saying that the vehicle was stolen and believed to belong to William Nicholas Abraham, whose body was found on the side of a highway Sunday. "That's fine it's been broken for ten years we can tolerate tonight," a Snap director of security engineering said last year about a fix to prevent the sale of drugs and sexual material on the app, according to a complaint filed by New Mexico's Attorney General. The complaint alleged Snap staffers knew that child sexual abuse material was circulating on Snapchat and that the company wasn't moving aggressively enough to stop it. Google's NotebookLM has been generating online buzz after a dystopian clip of what sounded like podcast hosts discovering they weren't real went viral on Reddit. NotebookLM has attracted attention for its realistic sounding outputs, which sound more like a pair of human podcasters than Alexa monotonously delivering a weather report. Google users can upload source documents and generate an audio overview they can download or generate a shareable link for, creating podcast-like technical deep dives into complex topics or overviews of meeting notes. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I'd love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. 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