Who will we even consider to be creators? I see two trends having an impact here. First, the line between mainstream and digital talent will fade away: not so much through creators ‘breaking through’ into the mainstream (a narrative that already feels out-of-date), as through the opposite - talent that has (or would have) found an audience through ... See more
The first is around collaboration. I’m fascinated by the delta between the number of people it can take to produce a TV show or a movie, and the fact that many creators work on their own. And yet, to take a very reductive view, both achieve the same goal of entertaining a viewer for a period of time. One conclusion to draw from this could be that m... See more
How to do this in a way that wouldn’t upset the creator community or disrupt the egalitarianism of the ecosystem or - after all, every channel starts with zero subscribers, and every video with zero views - is another question: I’m excited to see if anyone’s figured it out by 2030.
But I’d love to see infrastructure built that specifically supports virtual teamwork for creators, and makes collaboration accessible, and as frictionless as possible, for all.
The internet has created huge consumer surplus - people value what they’re consuming far more highly than what they are currently paying for it: that’s an incredible opportunity.
Finally, paying for creator-associated goods is nothing new: creators have been flogging merch, doing brand deals and adding affiliate links in their descriptions and bios for years.
There are fundamentals that I don’t see changing: money comes into the ecosystem either from advertisers looking to reach an audience, or from the audience itself. For the former, the creator economy will continue to capture a greater and greater share of ad spend, mostly because it will capture a greater and greater share of viewer attention. But ... See more
One last thought here: having said earlier that money comes into the ecosystem either from advertisers or from viewers, I’m excited to see how the two can work together to have a compounding effect. For instance, Maybelline could sponsor a beauty creator’s memberships business, sending members regular make-up samples or discount codes.