12:37Colin and Samir · Interview
We need to talk about Backrooms
Colin and Samir break down the week three YouTubers made Hollywood irrelevant — from a car in Montana.
June 5thThe argument in one line.
YouTube redefined how views are counted, doubled the bar new channels must clear to monetize, and began paying top creators directly to stay off Netflix, three moves that all reward scale over access.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A YouTube creator trying to understand what the new view-counting and Partner Program rules actually change about your payout.
- A creator weighing how much to invest in Shorts given the new rolling 10 million views per 90 days requirement.
- Anyone building an audience on YouTube who wants to understand how platform policy shifts affect long-term strategy, not just this week's numbers.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for editing or growth tactics, this is a policy and news breakdown, not a how-to.
- You don't post on YouTube and have no stake in Partner Program thresholds or monetization mechanics.
The full version, fast.
YouTube made three announcements in one week. First, a view now counts the instant a video starts playing, even on autoplay, replacing the old watched-threshold count; ad revenue still runs on the old calculation, now labeled engaged views inside Creator Studio. Second, starting February 2027, new channels need double the current requirements for Partner Program eligibility: 8,000 watch hours instead of 4,000, and 20 million shorts views instead of 10 million, with shorts monetization also requiring a rolling 10 million views every 90 days to keep getting paid. Third, YouTube is offering money to top creators to stay exclusive, a direct response to streamers recruiting its biggest names.
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Create a free account →Who's talking.
00:00cohostColin
00:00cohostSamir
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 13:14
01 · How views are counted
YouTube now counts a view from the first frame of autoplay instead of a watched threshold. Ad revenue still runs on the old calculation, renamed engaged views. The hosts debate what view count actually signals to creators, viewers, and advertisers.
13:14 – 22:02
02 · Partner Program and monetization
Starting February 2027, new channels need double the watch hours and shorts views to qualify for monetization, and shorts creators must clear a rolling 10 million views every 90 days to keep getting paid.
22:02 – 28:17
03 · YouTube fights back against Netflix
YouTube is paying top creators to stay exclusive as Netflix recruits creator-made shows. The hosts discuss what that shift does to where newer creators aim their ambitions.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- YouTube now counts a view the instant a video starts playing, even on autoplay, instead of waiting for a watched threshold.
- Ad revenue still runs on the old view calculation, which YouTube now labels engaged views inside Creator Studio.
- Starting February 2027, new YouTube channels need 8,000 watch hours instead of 4,000 to join the Partner Program.
- New channels will need 20 million shorts views instead of 10 million to qualify for monetization starting February 2027.
- Shorts monetization requires a rolling 10 million views every 90 days; falling to 9 million forfeits that entire period's payout.
- One creator's video had 250,000 public views but 2.6 million impressions, the exact gap the new view count is designed to close.
- YouTube is offering top creators money to upload exclusively to its platform for a set period, directly countering Netflix's recruitment of creator-made shows.
- Public view count has never reliably signaled that content is landing, conversation and people mentioning it offline is the stronger signal.
- Money that creators miss under the new shorts threshold doesn't disappear, it flows to the smaller pool of creators who do clear the bar.
- The most sophisticated advertisers already look past raw view counts at signals like event turnout and audience loyalty.
- Platform revenue should be treated as found money rather than a business foundation, since thresholds and rules can change without warning.
What YouTube's three policy changes mean for your channel
WHAT TO LEARN
YouTube redefined how it counts a view, raised the bar to get paid, and started paying top creators to stay exclusive, three moves that reward scale and favor the platform's biggest names.
- A view now counts the instant a video starts playing, even on autoplay, so public view counts will look inflated compared to the old threshold-based count.
- Ad revenue still runs on the old calculation, renamed engaged views inside Creator Studio, so the public number and the number that pays you are now two different metrics.
- Starting February 2027, new channels need 8,000 watch hours and 20 million shorts views, double the current requirements, to qualify for the Partner Program.
- Shorts payouts require a rolling 10 million views in every 90 day window, so falling even slightly short of that threshold forfeits that period's earnings entirely.
- Money that creators miss under the new shorts threshold doesn't vanish, it gets redistributed to the smaller pool of creators who do clear the bar.
- Public view count has never been the most reliable signal that content is landing, conversation and people bringing it up offline are the stronger signal.
- Platform revenue should be treated as found money rather than a foundation for a business, since the rules and thresholds can change without warning.
- When top creators get paid to stay exclusive to one platform, it reshapes what newer creators aspire to and where they imagine their career path leading.
Terms worth knowing.
- YouTube Partner Program
- The eligibility tier that lets a channel turn on ads and other monetization tools, gated by watch-hour, subscriber, or view thresholds.
- Engaged views
- YouTube's new name for the old view-counting method, still used to calculate ad revenue even after the public view count changed to count from the first frame.
- RPM
- Revenue per mille, the amount a creator earns per thousand views after YouTube's cut, used to estimate real earnings from reported view and payout numbers.
Things they pointed at.
08:32channelNuseir Yassin (Nas Daily)
22:08linkLucas Shaw's report on YouTube offering exclusivity deals against Netflix
Lines you could clip.
00:27
“As soon as frame one hits, it counts as a view.”
03:05
“I think the view count, the public view count has actually never been the thing that informs us that we're making something that people are watching.”
08:45
“All view counts are fake. Most videos have a completion rate of 5% or less. So 1 million views is effectively 50,000 real humans watching.”
13:53
“If you have 9 million views over 90 days, you will not get that money from Shorts.”
26:19
“No doubt to me, the independent creator wins across the board right now.”
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 13:14denseView counting change and what it signals to creators and advertisers
13:14 – 22:02densePartner Program and Shorts monetization thresholds doubling
22:02 – 28:17YouTube's exclusivity payments to counter Netflix
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Over the past few weeks there have been some major updates and major announcements that have to do with YouTube and how it operates. YouTube is all out of whack. Can't make more money if you're not in the partner program now can we?
And a lot of people are upset about this. This is going to mess everything up for a while. There could be some major changes for creators so today we're going to break down three different updates and announcements and tell you what they mean.
The first update YouTube changed how they count views. It now counts as soon as the video starts playing, even if that's on the homepage, autoplay. As soon as frame one hits, it counts as a view.
What was it before? I saw Rene Ritchie, the creator liaison from YouTube, talking about this. And in response to someone on Twitter who said that it was 30 seconds, he said, no, it's actually just...
Some seconds. Yeah, he said YouTube doesn't specify. This is the quote.
YouTube doesn't specify how many seconds because it can vary from situations. And so people can't game what that view system is. They don't tell you the specific number of seconds.
So I wonder if it was like a percentage of what the video was before. Maybe. Yeah, it's really interesting because this is obviously like this.
This metric is the basis. of this economy. It is the game.
It's the game, right? It is the basis of the economy in terms of like, this dictates your advertising rates. It dictates also in terms of like ad sets, how much money you make through ad sets.
Public perception. Dictates perception. And depending on actually this size and scale, it dictates your ability to build other businesses.
That one is... dependent on fans, not necessarily views. But views have been a foundation to this business and the advertising business.
So the premise that this is calculated on like a immediate first frame is really interesting. This happened a while ago with Facebook. Do you remember when Facebook launched video?
And that was calculated like just so long as it started playing, it was a view. People have a lot of criticism about... Twitter or X and its viewership because of this same thing, that those feel inflated.
But this on YouTube feels like a pretty different change. And to be fair, CPMs and the revenue behind it will be based off of the old view calculation, which is now called engaged views that creators will be able to see in studio. So a couple of things here.
I thought about this over the weekend quite a bit. And I thought about it through the lens of like, Number one, if we think about this as creators, and then let's think about it through advertisers, because those are the two people who engage with views beyond viewers, right?
So first as creators, I did a lot of thinking about this. I think the view count, the public view count has actually never been the thing that informs us that we're making something that people are watching. Does that make sense?
What does inform us? Conversation. If people tweet about our stuff, if they come up to us and say, hey, I loved that episode, you and I over our past 15 years have engaged with episodes that we've made through other people talking about them.
That's when we know we made something that people are watching. I would say yes. And especially when we talk about creators at large, like when we have talked about Mr.
Beast over the years, we are largely talking about like the amount of viewership. It's still a metric that we... hold and talk about to compare.
Of course. I'm not negating that. I'm just saying as a creator, if the view count wasn't public, if it didn't exist, you would know if people are watching your stuff or not.
There's like a feeling to it. Yeah. At the same time, this number is deeply rooted in our own self -worth, our own egos, our...
understanding of ourselves in the relative context of creators. Like, where do we stack up in the world? So it means a lot.
Like, to have this number change is actually very significant. But if it's changing for everyone, isn't it kind of changing for no one? You're just going to have whatever the new standard is going to be.
Yeah, that might be true. I actually have no idea. Isn't more better?
Or is the perception that... If it's just counted upon first glance that it's not as valuable. That would require a level of nuance that I'm not positive exists in our world.
I would agree. I would agree. I think, I think this is a very pro creator move from YouTube through the lens of the advertising industry.
So now back to the advertisers, I think like the most nuanced advertisers are going to have to. understand a variety of signals to know if they want to invest in a creator. I think that already existed before, but one of those signals I think is like offline activation.
Like if a creator throws an event, you're like, how many people showed up? Was it packed? Did it sell out quickly?
A great example of this is when we went with Jimmy to the American Dream Mall. Nobody knew. We were coming out of the pandemic at that time.
Jimmy had gone from maybe 10 or 30 million subscribers upwards of like a hundred. Nobody knew how many people were going to show up that day.
He didn't know. And we showed up and the place was packed. In that moment, I think there's this very famous clip that I was filming behind Jimmy and he goes over the balcony and you see just the sea of people in the mall.
That clip was used in every sizzle reel about creators because it was this like, that's an audience. right? So I think like the signal from an advertising perspective now is going to be a variety of other things if you are incredibly nuanced as an advertiser.
If you are not, I think creators are about to get paid more money. So let me ask you a question about one of our own videos. In the YouTube of yesterday, our episode about hankering and AI has 250 ,000 views.
If you actually look at the impressions, the amount of times that video was shown to people, it's 2 .6 million. So in the YouTube of today, moving forward, you could argue that that video may live closer to 2 .6 million views. I don't think so.
No, because that's impressions of the thumbnail. Yeah, but like - That's not autoplays. There may be some autoplays in there.
There's likely some autoplays in there. I can see a world where it shoots up to like a million views. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's say it lives at a million. Yeah. Fine.
So let's say it lives at a million. Yeah. Sounds good to me.
Feels good. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Because that video had impact.
Like people were talking about it. This is going to sound maybe not related, but I actually think it really is. And the way that when we were first coming up on YouTube, YouTube really leaned into a lot of creators and like put them on subways in New York and on billboards everywhere.
I think this is somewhat of a scaled equivalent of that. Because to the broader world, we likely all look and feel bigger. That's a really good point.
So I'll pull this section directly from their update. Their quote is, we hope that having metric parity across all formats gives creators a clearer picture of their overall exposure and makes it easier to confidently express their true scale and value to brand partners and sponsors. That's fair.
To bring up your marketing point, like if we are, if I look at Colin and Samir as a billboard and I want to know how many people. just saw us, engaged with us. This metric is closer to that, and at least it is the same across all of our formats.
Go ahead, Syd. You got something. I think the fact that every view is now the same across shorts, long form, everywhere, that is probably the best part of this update.
The rest, my hot take is that I don't know how much it really is going to matter in even like six months from now when everyone catches on. Because right now, you're saying like it gives creators the opportunity to get paid more. When advertisers find out that...
like what the new relative good is for a video, it's not going to matter anymore. I think this was a pretty neutral move. But I think also advertisers will have a sense and probably have a better sense.
The most sophisticated ones have been in this industry for a long time. They know when something is working or not working. But yeah, if they're spending...
I don't think it matters. I don't think this actually matters at all. I don't know, actually.
Let me bring up a creator, though, who's actually really unhappy with this. Okay. So this is...
Nassir Nasdaily, who we know we've had on the show, he sent this out on X. Social media is in crisis mode. Followers, an outdated term.
No guarantee of seeing your content again. So it's not followers. It's just one -time positive interactions.
Views. YouTube was the last holdout and now they folded. All view counts are fake.
Most videos have a completion rate of 5 % or less. So 1 million views is effectively 50 ,000 real humans watching. Revenue non -existent on any platform except for YouTube longs, and even that will probably change soon.
This brings us to today, millions of broke creators competing for a chance to pop up in reels, to be viewed once by extremely bored users and forgotten forever. The platforms win, users and creators lose. This is the worst period for social media.
The creator economy did not deliver for the masses. It delivered for the top 1 % of creators and four platforms. That's it.
And the sad thing is, I don't even know where to start. to fix it. The one thing that sticks out to me there is that the creator economy didn't deliver for the masses.
I think there's a big difference between social media and the creator economy. And the post begins by saying that social media is in crisis. I think social media is currently a product that is delivering for the masses.
It is no longer social, but it is a form of media that is delivering and made for the masses. The creator economy, is an economy like any other that is not built in a way that it is for as many people as possible, for the masses.
Yeah, is it one of the biggest economies? Meaning like everyone who's on Instagram could potentially make a run at being like a creator, meaning like an independent media platform that is generating ad revenue. Like everyone on the internet.
there's not really a barrier. Like there was a friend of a friend who, you know, I got connected with because they were like, a friend doesn't know what to do. He started doing parenting advice on Instagram.
Now he has half a million followers. What do you think he should do? And I was like, how fascinating that you can right now, just anybody in the world with a phone and internet connection could participate in this economy.
I think it works. The creator economy works the best for those at the top, like any industry does. But I think it is one of the last meritocracies standing where it could be you tomorrow.
You could be there. And it's not who you know. Sometimes it is.
But I think anyone out there with a phone and an idea has the opportunity to become the top of the top. And that is what is so enticing about it and what still works about it. I think there's like two things happening.
There's the creator economy. And then there's the entertainment business. And what happens is like the top 1 % are engaging in the entertainment business, right?
Meaning like that is heavily relationship spaced. It's heavily like you have to navigate the entertainment business to elevate. And heavily temperamental.
Like you could be in it and then out of it. But just like the entertainment business, just like an actor or a musician, like you can get hot and lose it. The top 1 % cycles in, cycles out.
Yeah. But the creator economy is more, when I think about that term, it's more about like the amount of people who can make money by producing independent media. Not like make millions and millions of dollars.
It's just like you can generate if you're making good content. We know a lot of people that sustain. Yeah.
Good living. You can make a living wage. You can make a additional wage doing it.
You can also make a living wage if you're not the creator. If you're working with and for the creator. That's right.
Hey there, Sid. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know about this premise of like it didn't deliver for the masses. Yeah, it seems a little too doomer pilled where I think like the two things can be true where it's like there are issues in terms of like I think we are ending up in a bigger barbell distribution where most money is going to the top and it's like coming from things that were middle in the bottom.
But at the same time, it's like. It feels hacky to say, but it's like there's never been a better time to have the exposure and be able to make it. All of that opportunity is still there.
And there's never been a more competitive time to join the top 1 % of creators, right? That is also true because there's more creators than ever. It's extraordinarily competitive at the top.
Let's talk about the next update from YouTube because that one is about... monetization and it does seem to make it more competitive. Yeah, so the next update Starting in February, 2027, new channels will need double the long form watch hours and double the shorts views to hit partner.
So that would be going up from 4 ,000 watch hours to 8 ,000 watch hours and from 10 million shorts views to 20 million shorts views. And on top of that, for monetization on shorts, it requires a rolling minimum of 10 million views in a 90 day period to get paid. If you have 9 million views over 90 days, you will not get that money from Shorts.
A lot of people online have been saying that this new policy was put in place by YouTube in order to combat the influx of AI content that has entered the platform, which I think is an interesting take. However, the flip side of that is a lot of creators and people online have also been saying that this will only encourage more AI use, more outsourcing to...
programs because now shorts creators specifically have to keep up with 10 million views every 90 days, which is a really hard feat to get. If you are not already in the program, or if you are in the program, you have to keep that cadence every 90 days. It makes it way more of a game.
And so now you probably will have to cut some corners or put out way more content and what's going to help you do that. Or just higher viewership content. Yeah.
Obviously, that's really hard. That's luck, though. In order to do your part to keep up the cadence, you're probably going to post more.
Yeah. So why do you guys think that YouTube made this change to making it harder? I think it's like any other situation like the NBA, right?
It's like there's limited spots, right? Don't you think? And it's harder to make it.
Is that too simple to say? I think it definitely plays into it. Right?
Like it's more competitive. And also I think, okay, here's the first thing. I think shorts monetization has always been something that YouTube has tried to solve.
They've tried it multiple times over of like, how do we get shorts creators paid? Now, the money that doesn't get paid to someone who doesn't meet this threshold, does that not go to the pool that is now basically a smaller group of creators who get paid more? Yeah.
Right. So then now like the ones who are really going after it on short form, which is a lot of people get paid more. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so then again, like the same way that like, if there's a smaller group of top performers, they get rewarded better. It's great for mid to large creators.
It's really discouraging for the smaller creators that are trying to break into it and want to put in time and effort and be rewarded for that time and effort. I look at it though as a, it's a, you know, to be a creator with YouTube, to be in the partner program is a business relationship. And they are the ones, obviously, clearly, who tell you what it means to be in a business relationship with them.
Yeah. Right. So to Samir's point of the NBA, like.
You have to be a certain level of caliber and player and show a level of performance and an opportunity to make money for the NBA, to play for an NBA team. And that bar may raise over time. And so there is an element of that.
Okay, so let me just also paint a picture. I would not classify us as shorts creators. We post shorts, but we're not shorts creators.
We've done about a million engaged views in the past 28 days on shorts. And we've generated a hundred and... So if we look at three months going at this rate, we're not going to hit it.
It's also going to be $400 in three months. Which is a lot for someone who's not you. Sure.
Yeah, it can be a lot for sure. But the suggestion of YouTube, I think, of what's happening is like the person who's $10 million and up, who's in the thousands of dollars of revenue in three months, we should reward them more. It just doesn't feel like it's...
I agree with you that $400 to a creator who's just starting out, that's not nothing at all. Yeah, that's really exciting and it is encouraging. The first few AdSense checks we got were really encouraging to keep going.
And I think, I don't know if this is the case, but I think if YouTube shows you that you have technically earned this money from the platform, I don't think it should be taken back. I think it should be held in an account until it is at a sizable amount. that makes sense to sort of cut that check for YouTube.
I would not recommend showcasing that people have earned a level of money that they're not going to get paid, if that's the case. I think it is, right? Because again, these dollars, if we don't get to 10 million in the next three months, we're not...
It definitely provides incentive to reach the viewership you need and the thresholds, but it sets an interesting precedent to not get paid. Yeah, I think it's getting really interesting because we have some... We know a lot of creators, right?
We talked to a lot of creators through creator support. We engage with a lot of creators at many different levels of where they are in their creator journey. And I think the short form creator right now is finding more success on Instagram than they are on YouTube, unless their content is like incredibly native to YouTube.
Finding success in... of views and engagement way and in a brand partnerships way? Both.
Yeah. In all the above. And like we know one creator specifically who based on this change just got knocked off the YouTube partner program.
I know someone else who also. Yeah. I'm sure we all know like a decent amount of people who are no longer in the partner program and will have to work their way to get back there.
I think the challenge is it's going to be much more attractive like to keep posting on Instagram and build your business there. The same way when we were sitting in our new season of creator support, there's a lot of short form creators that we talked to that didn't even post their short form to YouTube because they were like, it just like doesn't go anywhere.
Yeah. And it's not always going to be the creators that are at $400 that are missing out on this. There are going to be creators who are losing a few thousand dollars every few months.
I don't know though. I don't think so. Someone responded to our email actually when we posted about, or when we published an article about this in the published press.
Subscribe. Someone responded and gave us a breakdown of exactly how much he was going to be missing out on because of these changes. And it was a couple thousand dollars.
Their RPM would have to be so high, right? I guess. Yeah.
And, you know, I'm not a shorts creator, so I don't really know the ins and outs. But the numbers that they gave were pretty accurate to what I assume. I don't think they were lying.
And they were like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how I'm going to pay the people that are working for me on this stuff. So there's something interesting here, which is like, yeah, the changes, like anything can change at any moment in the platform relationship, right?
And like, I would encourage all creators. We did this from day one, largely because we were so niche and platform payouts meant very little to us. We've never considered.
platform revenue in our financial planning. Never. It's always operated as found money.
I would urge all creators because you have no control over it. You actually have no idea, right? Like what could happen tomorrow with YouTube platform payout.
So I would think like, again, to the first update, I think that's very pro creator in the context of brand partnerships. And like, that is what you have to do if you're in the business. That's like one of the ways to get predictable revenue.
The other way is probably subscription or... you know, some other form. But platform revenue is not one that you should, it's an incredible one because it can build a business, but I don't think it's one that you should build your business on, especially if you're starting to hire and putting expense against it.
Yeah. I think whether views go way up because of platform changes or revenue goes way down or way up because of platform changes, the one thing you need to be keyed into is as cheesy as it sounds, is like the actual relationship with your audience.
And I think that's becoming more important than ever, especially as views become more available. You look at Mr. Beast vlogging a week of his life on his second channel.
That is a move for a very new version of YouTube where depth and connection with an audience matters potentially more than the viewership metric on the screen. For sure. So let's move on to the third and final update.
Last week, Lucas Shaw broke some news that YouTube is beginning to fight back against Netflix taking their creators and that he said YouTube is offering millions of dollars to popular channels if they upload their videos to the site exclusively for a certain period of time in an effort to halt Netflix's pursuit of its biggest creators.
Yeah, so I think the addition of the off -platform opportunity changes the dynamic of what happens on YouTube right now. It changes the, like mostly YouTube and the reason why the like top 1 % of creators matters in the ecosystem and as always matters is it creates aspiration. The amount of people in our age demographic who are professional creators today who cite Casey Neistat as the reason they are a professional creator is immense.
The aspiration needs to remain or, you know, the aspiration. is to be like the top creators. If the top creators are moving to Netflix, that shifts the aspiration, right?
It shifts the aspiration for a storyteller and a creator to go, cool, I'll build my thing on YouTube. And then the, oh, I see what the roadmap is. The goal is to go to Netflix.
And that changes the environment now because now uploading a YouTube video could lead you to becoming like a, what used to be known as like a Hollywood celebrity. I guess that was the case always. Yeah.
Right? But I guess just the path to get there is it's being informed in a different way. No, totally.
I think it matters that the top, the top 1%, continue to have a home on YouTube that is valuable, that especially when it comes to advertisers, feels like it's exclusive to YouTube. Like YouTube obviously is an advertising business, so it needs to feel like there is something different and special on YouTube that's not everywhere.
Do you think it'll work? I think it depends on what your goal is as a creator if this kind of deal works for you. And I know that you're asking more in the general landscape, but I think we get into how these two different platforms are perceived.
Netflix is a home of prestige TV. When you put creator shows on there, you are kind of showing that creator shows fit in with the Stranger Things of the world, with the K -pop demon hunters of the world, which is great for creators. Um, but also now YouTube has to figure out how to counter and say, um, we want to make sure that you have all the resources necessary to make what you want to make on our platform.
So you don't leave us. Um, and yeah, I think that's the thing is like the ambitions have gone up of creators. That's, that's like, and, and.
YouTube is being forced to explore how they support those ambitions. That to me is the understanding. Like if you look at our friends and like our cohort of creators, like people have big ideas for shows that they did not have before.
And serialized. And serialized shows. And like, and you're also having another thing happen, which is like Hollywood talent is getting jobs at creator companies, right?
So now you have people who know how to make chef's table working at a cooking creator's channel. And it's like, oh, okay, could we make that? Yeah, totally.
And then what's the economics of making that? Okay, it costs much more money. Are we going to put up the upfront capital?
Is this a sponsored thing? Just more optionality. And I think the premise of YouTube is like, you can just upload it here.
Now the additional premise is, if you're a top creator, we can help find a brand partner for it. But that's kind of where we've been. The question now is where else does it go in the same way that you can walk into Netflix and go, here's my idea for a show and they can go, cool, here's a check, go make the show.
Is that something that YouTube will offer in the future? Is it something they should offer? But yeah, the ambitions of the creators are going up and the talent is there to actually make the entertainment.
So something has to happen, I think. So if we look at all three of these changes, overall in the next year, two year landscape, who wins? Who loses?
And is there anything you'd want to say to people on the fringes that might be bummed out or feel like the cards are stacked against them? No doubt to me, the independent creator wins across the board right now. The opportunity to make it as an independent creator, specifically on YouTube, is still there to an unbelievable degree.
So much so that you can continue to grow and build and hire. and then explore options at streamers and other companies. Like, I think it's such a good thing that there is competition now at the top where there actually isn't as much competition because YouTube is so good at what they do with helping people monetize is in that middle area.
Yeah. Right? Like, there aren't many places actually to just upload a long -form piece of content and monetize it.
It's basically just YouTube. Yeah. I think it's like, it's a great time, continues to be a great time to be a creator.
Anybody can upload anything and you can, if you make a great show, you can make it, which is really cool. It's getting highly competitive for our collective like viewership audience. Like the connection to an audience is also getting competitive.
And then the economic opportunity is getting competitive. But that just means like the space is maturing and it's starting to grow to the point where it has to get competitive. So it's a great time to jump in and it's harder than ever.
The promise of the creator economy is still alive. Of course it is. As long as you can upload something for free, it's alive.
Like as long as that upload button still exists. And because it's just largely up to you to determine. Yeah.
It's up to you to press publish. It's whoa. We should start a brand.
That's really good. That was good. All right.
Let us know what you guys think about the updates to YouTube. What does it mean for creators? What does it mean for the future of the platform?
We'll see you guys next week.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Three YouTube announcements landed in the same week, and this conversation works through what each one actually means for a creator's payout and long-term strategy.
