Sam Blumenthal

The backdrop for Tophatter’s new approach is gaming’s overall rise in the U.S., which has pushed retailers and brands to experiment with gaming-adjacent platforms like Twitch. (Twitch has nearly tripled the number of monthly broadcasts it has hosted since 2019, bringing it up to 9.7 million monthly streams today.) In-game transactions, called... See more

While this motivation may be latent—even subconscious, for most—in the U.S., it’s an economic driver that’s well understood in China, fueling a thriving video ecommerce market. In Asia, the powerful force of video entertainment shopping has spawned a livestream ecommerce industry akin to professional movie production. It’s more than a place where... See more

Pinterest’s latest new social commerce update gives influencers the ability to add shopping links within its Instagram Stories-style Idea Pins post format. As of July 27, talent (which Pinterest calls creators) can disclose paid partnerships and add tags to featured products that are in the platform’s product catalog, which was expanded by a... See more

For an IP product, part or output to have commercial value, it must create utility for fans — individuals with no ownership interest in the IP who gain utility through consumption.

One question I had is whether you can build giant fictional worlds this way. Right now the NFT market is full of speculators hoping to flip their acquisitions for a quick profit. There is more than a little of the mania that fueled this winter’s meme stock enthusiasm to be found on the crypto Discords. (More than a little cynicism among the... See more

Douyin Livestream Emerges As The New Capital For DTC Brands. Inside Douyin livestreaming: The difference between social commerce and traditional e-commerce is that social commerce is largely developed around social content, instead of the product. Douyin boasts 600 million daily active users with strong purchasing power. Douyin livestream... See more