Creators Wanted Now!
First the White House. Now the US Department of State is looking for creators too. Meanwhile, Instagram is laser focused on creators, to win the TikTok crowds.
💬 Quick CONVERSATION STARTERS:
Let’s start with Instagram
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, revealed last week that the platform is now laser focused on content creators. “We’re focused on creators,” he said in his weekly AMA on his own Instagram channel.
He added: “We think power’s going to continue to shift from institutions to individuals across industries. You know, athletes are more relevant than teams.”
Mosseri, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s closer adviser, also talked about how legacy media is changing: “Now journalists are building their own brands outside of the publications that they work for. You know, whether it’s entertainment or news or music, more and more people are interested in individuals. And so we’re building for creators.”
He continued: “All around the world, we focus on creators that are the more relevant with young people because young people are early adopters, they tend to give us a sense for where the world is going to go to over time.”
The TikTok shock
Following the 75-day extension last month for a possible TikTok ban in the US, Instagram is aggressively courting top creators.
Facebook, another Meta platform we now rarely talk about, is also courting creators in a bid to make Facebook cool again,” wrote Kaya Yurieff and Sylvia Varnham O'Regan in The Information.
They explain: “Facebook’s challenge is to get creators to put more focus on the app. For many, posting on the app, rather than Instagram or YouTube, is an afterthought.”
So Meta is talking to the teams of prominent YouTubers — including MrBeast —to get their feedback on how to make the app better for creators. The company is now also offering new financial incentives, “including a New Year’s Bonus that allows creators to earn up to $15,000 by posting photos or carousels, in addition to a bonus for Reels videos that requires creators to post twice the amount of videos to Facebook as Instagram.”
Enter Substack…
Instagram and Facebook are not the only platform courting content creators. Substack as well is trying to attract TikTok creators, although focusing on a different angle.
“Substack is not competing with TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or whatever,” Substack co-founder
said on Notes. “We are competing with bad business models that have screwed writers and creators for generations.”Earlier, Hamish shared a recent post by
in which the author, commenting on another post by , explains how “Substack isn’t pursuing large user growth at huge cost. It’s actually building a sustainable business pretty much right out of the blocks, with the aim to add revenue only when users decide they are consuming something worth paying for. That’s not what Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok did, not even close.”Paul added: “We actually need more ‘Substacks’ — companies that seek to serve an audience and align their growth and wellbeing with that audience.”
Diplomats, journalists, or creators?
After President Donald Trump’s new White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced a shift to invest on creators and new media last month, it’s now time for the US Department of State to follow suit.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told
of that he will open the State Department briefing room to independent journalists and other new media creators.“We have to go where the people are, and so we need to communicate with people,” Rubio said. “This is their State Department. It’s not my State Department.”
Trump’s top diplomat explained: “We’re making decisions every day, and they deserve to hear from us. Where are people getting their news and information? That’s where we need to be delivering our news and information.”
He continued: “We can’t allow our message to solely be provided through the filter of legacy, traditional media outlets. Sadly — I’m not trying to be mean here — their readership is down, their viewership is down, their ratings are down. We have to take our message where people are getting their news and information, and in these sort of long-form interviews where you’re getting serious questions and can provide answers to nuanced issues, not little sound bites that they run during the cable news hour for news and entertainment purposes. So, we’ll engage everybody, but we almost certainly see a greater emphasis on independent journalism because that’s where people are getting their news and information.”
At the White House the same strategy has worked quite well, attracting thousands of new media creators and independent reporters.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained to Laura Trump on Fox: “Unfortunately, the mainstream media has been blinded by this bias — this anti-Trump bias — and it's actually quite sad, because rather than dealing with people who are truly interested in journalistic integrity and finding out the truth in the facts, they're coming into that room with a preconceived narrative and bias.”
She added: “The president speaks the truth. He speaks his mind directly — it's just my job to prepare and figure out what the truth is versus what the fake news narratives are, and then just bring that to the podium.”
I wonder if anyone making these statements understands the irony? It’s like watching an archetypical ouroboros play out in real-time.