Night Light | Elon Doubts MrBeast

Author

Reed Duchscher
November 25, 2022

The Reed of the Week

Can Elon's Twitter compete with YouTube for creators?My brain really wants to stop paying attention to the daily barrage of Twitter updates from Elon. Watching him build in public and openly consider community feedback has been awesome, but it's also been controversial and hard to keep up with. One thing most people in my world totally agree with him on, though, is the need for a healthy incentive system to attract content creators.

Until this week, creators hadn't engaged in this topic. Then MrBeast decided to hop in the thread and challenge Elon. Jimmy was skeptical that Twitter would be able to compete with YouTube as Twitter won't be able to match RPM's that YouTube pays. From there, responses from people like KSI and Marques Brownlee came in making for a super interesting conversation about what YouTube's real RPMs are. This is something I've posted about before, and my take is that Elon's goal is more achievable than Jimmy thinks. Here's why:

(1) $20 YT RPMs are rare and very niche dependent, averages are closer to $4.(2) Much like Snap and FB, creators will just resyndicate their existing video content to Twitter for the extra money.(3) Elon has proved he will simply overspend to get his way, so a >55% rev share to creators is possible.

Creator News

LankyBox launched their own food menu with Chuck E. CheeseThis was a great match. Justin and Adam are running the fastest growing kids channel on YouTube and Chuck E. Cheese is one of the most popular kids brands of all time. Both parties gain a lot here.

MrBeast and ECU announced a college course for aspiring creator prosJimmy dropped out of college, so of course he's qualified to have his own class. But really... a credential program teaching young people how to enter the creator economy is long overdue. What do all kids want to be now when they grow up?

FIFA and YouTube tapped top creators for World Cup Creators making the trip to Qatar to promote the World Cup include Deestroying, Jesser, and Carter Sharer. It's refreshing to see FIFA lean in to YouTube to reach the next generation of fútbol fans.

Can't Miss Clips

iShowSpeed's "World Cup" song made it to QatarSpeed is the biggest reason soccer is relevant to Gen Z/A today. It's awesome to see a content creator transcend the music industry - and pro sports as well - on the path to fulfilling his dreams.

Emma Chamberlain deleted TikTok, whyyy :(Emma has always bucked conventional wisdom as a creator and now she's breaking out of the creator label altogether. Emma is as A-list as they come, so no arguments from me on this one.

Of course Mayweather pulled a fast one on Deji before their fightFloyd is a known shyster, so props to Deji on seeing it through for the fans.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Bob Iger is back at DisneyThis one kind of caught everyone off guard, but Bob is such a legend that you can't hate the move. Stock moved up on the news too.

Forbes released most valuable sports agenciesThe list is top heavy, and that's not going to change. Interested to see if any up and comers tap into NIL to make a run at the bottom of the list.

50% of the American workforce are in the creative class nowThis will only get bigger and we'll continue to see new companies like Creative Juice, Patreon, etc. sprout up to foster this change in society.

Jobs