Comparing TikTok, Instagram and YouTube subscriber value - plus YouTube's 7 year itch and much more!

YouTube’s Seven-Year Itch: I still remember VidCon 2014 like it was yesterday –– Patreon was hot, Hank Green’s artist subscription service Subbable was growing, and YouTube launched a tip jar at VidCon. A year later, though, Subbable was part of Patreon, and the tip jar had mostly faded to obscurity. Fast forward six more years, and the tip jar is back with the name “Super Thanks”! Everything is even more super-duper in 2021!

Facebook Is Now a Media Company: Bulletin, Facebook’s new newsletter platform, just announced another 31 writers. That’s unremarkable in and of itself, but what it signifies for Facebook is epic. For years, Facebook (and other social platforms) argued that under Section 230 they weren’t media companies, but platforms, and thus weren’t responsible for the content on their platforms. Three weeks ago, I criticized Bulletin, because it was only open to a select group. That was wrong –– I should have congratulated Facebook for finally admitting it was a media company. After all, hand-picking writers and incentivizing them to produce exclusive content for your site (and therefore excluding others) is the textbook definition of an internet-based media company. Welcome to the club, Big Blue!

25 TikTok Followers = 1 YouTube Sub: CNBC just reviewed the Karat Black Card, which gives credit to unbankable creators. The card’s great, but what’s most revealing is how Karat decides if you’re worthy –– they only approve you if your follower or subscriber count is above a certain number. According to Karat co-CEO Eric Wei, the baseline is either 100,000 YouTube subs, 125,000 Instagram followers, or 2.5M TikTok followers. This makes TikTok followers worth just 4% of a YouTube sub, while you’ll need 1.25 Instagram followers to match that same sub on YouTube. It’s a dramatic devaluation of TikTok’s subscriber base and is likely more predicated on what you can EARN on TikTok versus the value of each community member. But there are no favorites in financial factoring.

Five Steps to Great Communities: Want to build bigger and more robust communities? Writer and expert Anna Grigoryan is a must-follow. She recently finished a five-part series called “Zero to Community,” where she lays out how to find your mission, build your online community stack, determine pricing, track the right metrics, and build culture. Each post is individually insightful; together, they form a great resource to help beginners and experts alike.

QUIBIS: 

• Clubhouse Lite - A Round-up of Short Form Audio Apps.
• Interview: Zuckerberg Wants To Own the Metaverse.
• Charli D’Amelio and Linktree launch a star search.
• More Didi Fallout: Bytedance Scraps IPO.
• The Creator Economy gets the New Yorker treatment and the Rolling Stone treatment.
• New research on the state of TikTok and influencer marketing.
• TiKTok-funded study “shows” TikTok’s impact on culture and music.
• Even more research on what creators are ACTUALLY earning – although this piece seems mostly about Instagrammers.
• Could Clubhouse be this decade’s Foursquare?
• How enemies fuel audience growth.
• Wow - NFT Marketplace OpenSea raises $100M Series B.
• Interesting look at YouTube CPM rates by country for a channel. I’m not sure how extensive it is; Zambia tops out at $13.

This Week at VidCon Now:

• TUESDAY: Brendan Gahan explores the “Flicker, Flash and Flare” framework to develop compelling TikTok content for brands. Add to your Google, Apple or Outlook calendar – and watch it live at noon PM (PT) at live.vidcon.com.
• THURSDAY: You’ve seen him on TikTok and YouTube –– now it’s time to get personal! Join Charlie Curtis Beard as he stops by for this interactive Q&A session. Be sure to tune in early for your chance to ask him a question live on stage! Watch it live at 3 PM (PT) here.

Tip of The Week: Today’s Tip of the Week comes from Tim Schmoyer, the founder of Video Creators. Check out his podcast and YouTube channel!

The problem with keyword optimization is that there are literally millions of videos already optimized with those exact same keywords. When a creator or brand tells me how much work they're putting into their keywords and I ask, "That's great. How's that working for you?" I usually get a depressing answer. Furthermore, YouTube's search and discovery systems are already so smart that they know exactly what's in your video when you upload it, so they no longer need metadata information to understand what your video is all about.

Instead, consider optimizing for your most ideal viewer. What YouTube really wants to know is, "How do viewers respond to this video? Do they watch it? Do they quickly abandon it? Do they click and watch more? Does it leave them feeling satisfied?" These are all viewer signals. The more positive the answers are to these kinds of questions, the better your video will perform and create a channel that is ripe for explosive growth. That means optimizing your titles, thumbnails, the opening seconds of each video, and then the rest of the video itself for your most ideal viewer. As you optimize for people, not robots, you'll be more likely to win on YouTube.

Startup of the Week: Popular creator Nuseir Yassin (Daily Nas) is on a mission –– to train the world’s creators and brands to advance the creator economy. His latest startup, Nas Academy, just raised $11M to develop a worldwide platform for creators to help other creators build and achieve their dreams. According to Nuseir, it’s very creator-first –– creators who build educational experiences at the academy will own their users and revenue, while his team provides curriculum, production, and marketing experience. He’s expanding from Singapore and Dubai globally. I’m super excited to see what he builds, and we’ll be welcoming Nas and his instructors to VidCon Abu Dhabi and potentially elsewhere, too. VidCon’s all about helping creators build their community, craft, and business, and it’s always great to share a vision with other startups doing similar things.

What We’re Watching: Olympic athletes are creating videos about life in the Village. VidCon fav creators the Merrell Twins celebrated 6M YouTube subs with a thoughtful and mesmerizing rap –– it left me speechless (catch them live at VidCon in the US this fall). Instead of cleaning my office, I’m watching CleanTok videos. So satisfying!

See you around the internet, and feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up on our website at VidCon.com — scroll down and select “VidCon Weekly Industry Highlights."