| We hope you'll join us for our annual 2025 creator economy event on June 3 at NeueHouse Hollywood! This year's event, The Future of Influence: What's Next for Creators, Entertainment and AI, will feature speakers including Substack CEO and co-founder Chris Best, executives from Meta Platforms, Spotify, Coca-Cola and creators including Dhar Mann, Adam W and Corporate Natalie, with more exciting speaker announcements coming soon. Prices increase tomorrow! Space is limited, buy tickets here. If you're interested in sponsoring the event, please reach out to sponsorships@theinformation.com.
Welcome back! The Creator Economy newsletter celebrated its 4th birthday on Saturday! Thanks so much for reading. Snap is one of the first social media companies to report results, giving investors an early feel for how these advertising-supported businesses are faring. If it's any guide, the future view was glum, overshadowing gains the company has made with video and subscriptions. The Snapchat parent company said Tuesday it couldn't provide financial guidance for the second quarter due to uncertain "macro economic conditions" which could hurt demand for advertising. Snap also said it has experienced "headwinds" to start the current quarter. Snapchat lost 1 million daily active users in North America during the first quarter compared to both a year earlier and the prior quarter. Shares fell more than 15% in after-hours trading on Tuesday. Those updates masked some good news: revenue rose 14% to $1.36 billion during the first three months of the year, on the high end of the company's guidance. It generated free cash flow for the third straight quarter, increasing to $114 million from $38 million a year ago. Other revenue, primarily from subscriptions to Snapchat+, rose 75% to $152 million. What's more, CEO Evan Spiegel pointed to "a lot of progress" in Snapchat's TikTok competitor Spotlight, which has 500 million monthly active users, saying view time rose about 25% year-over-year during the first quarter. The number of posts by Snap creators on Spotlight rose more than 125% in North America compared to a year earlier. Spiegel said Snapchat has onboarded thousands of established creators and celebrities to the app, and also seen "significant growth" in new creators who have grown their businesses and followings organically on the app. That's a more chipper view than in some recent quarters, when Spotlight looked like it was getting left behind in the great rush towards short-form video. The company has also been testing a simplified version of Snapchat that's easier to navigate for new and more casual users. Spiegel said it's found that features like a more prominent Spotlight experience helped "contribute to increases in daily content viewers and total count views." The company now has more than 900 million monthly active users, getting closer to its goal of 1 billion. And global daily users during the quarter grew 9% to 460 million year over year. That's real progress. But in these wild markets, it doesn't take much for investors to get nervous. Here's what else is going on… See The Information's Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. Meta Platforms announced a new standalone app called Meta AI in a bid to take on OpenAI's ChatGPT, confirming The Information's previous reporting in September. Spotify reported 15% growth in revenue to 4.2 billion euros (or $4.78 billion), driven by its premium subscription business, which has benefited from price increases. However, its first-quarter profit was below the company's forecast. Read more here. OpenAI is incorporating more shopping features into ChatGPT search results. For web searches, ChatGPT will now include links to products with images and reviews. AI searches could cut into creators' lucrative product recommendations, as we previously wrote about here. Splice, a music startup that uses AI to blend audio samples, acquired Spitfire Audio for its catalog of tracks and sounds. Splice is paying $50 million, according to sources close to the company. Cheehoo, an AI animation startup for studios and creators, raised $10 million in funding led by Greycroft. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are among the group of Wall Street banks that have sold the final tranches of debt they lent Elon Musk in 2022 for his takeover of Twitter, now called X, according to the Wall Street Journal. • TikTok Shop will launch in Japan within the next few months, Nikkei reported. The company, which has been expanding its e-commerce efforts beyond the U.S., is planning to recruit sellers soon in the country. Earlier this year, TikTok Shop expanded to European countries including Germany, France and Italy. • Nico LeBourgeois, the head of U.S. operations for TikTok Shop, will now report to Mu Qing, a former e-commerce vice president at TikTok's Chinese sister app Douyin, Business Insider reported. LeBourgeois previously reported to ByteDance's head of e-commerce Bob Kang. TikTok and LeBourgeois didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Qing recently took over control of other key U.S. Shop teams like creator and agency partnerships, and will now also oversee US operations, according to Business Insider. That's the amount Spotify paid to podcasters and publishers during the first quarter. The payouts include ad revenue generated by audio and video podcasts, as well as payments Spotify makes to certain creators and publishers in its Spotify Partner Program based on the time users spend watching podcasts on its ad-free service. Spotify has been placing a huge emphasis on video podcasts as it tries to convince more podcasters that its platform can generate meaningful revenue as it looks to better compete with YouTube. Alex Cooper will be the subject of a new Hulu documentary titled "Call Her Alex." The two part series, which follows the "Call Her Daddy" host ahead of her first live tour, will debut at Tribeca Film Festival on June 8, and on Hulu two days later. Serena Kerrigan, a creator who hosted a reality dating show on Instagram Live during the pandemic, is launching her first TV scripted comedy series "Older Hotter Wiser" on Peacock on May 19, which follows a young woman ready to take on Hollywood. She will star in the series as well as being an executive producer and writer. Kerrigan also signed a deal for her first book featuring dating advice called "Let's Fcking Date" with Crown, which is part of Penguin Random House. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Take It Down Act on Monday by a vote of 409 to 2. The bill would criminalize publishing non-consensual intimate images and require social media sites to remove such images within 48 hours. Passes, a fan membership site for creators, filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it in February, which alleged it hosted child porn, calling the claims "meritless." Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I'd love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
0 comentários:
Postar um comentário