Four years ago, Chad Wild Clay and Vy Qwaint had an idea. They had spent well over a decade making videos on YouTube, building their kids’ entertainment brand, Spy Ninjas, to more than 44 million subscribers and 15 billion views across multiple channels. They’d launched legions of Spy Ninjas merch, signed a graphic novel deal with Scholastic, and designed their own mobile game. It was time for something bigger. “The reason we acquired the building was because we were filming our YouTube videos in Las Vegas,” Clay tells Tubefilter. “A lot of them, we film outside. It’s extremely hot. So we wer ..read more

The NBA‘s current broadcast contracts will expire after the end of the 2024-25 season, and several tech companies are vying for a piece of the world’s biggest basketball league. The Association may create a package of games that would be distributed via streaming, with Amazon Prime Video and YouTube emerging as the two most likely partners for that deal. News of the negotiations comes from The Wall Street Journal, which claimed that the price of NBA media rights is going up. That alone is not a surprise, since the NBA is relevant around the world and continues to ..read more

President Biden has officially signed a law that will force ByteDance to either divest TikTok or remove the app from U.S.-based devices. Now, it’s time for ByteDance to consider its options. The Beijing-based tech company must answer some burning questions: Will it choose “divest” or “ban”? And if it goes with the former option, how much money can it make by spinning off TikTok? As the dust settles on the newly passed law, the Wall Street Journal is putting forth several estimates for TikTok’s value. According to a recent WSJ report, one of TikTok’s potentia ..read more

It’s been one year since YouTube launched support for podcasts on its Music app, and listeners are getting some fresh options. In the latest episode of the Release Notes web series, YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie discussed several improvements that have streamlined the podcast listening experience on YouTube Music. The first episode of Release Notes featured a conversation between Ritchie and Johanna Voolich, and YouTube’s Chief Product Officer returned for the latest installment as well. The two execs discussed their personal listening habits (Voolich ..read more

Open Sauce, William Osman‘s STEM-palooza exhibition for content creators, engineers, and fans of all things science, is returning for its second year–and more than doubling in size. After debuting in 2023 with an attendance of over 10,000 people, Open Sauce is shifting locations this year to Daly City‘s Cow Palace, and is expecting more than 20,000 attendees. It’s also expecting 150 creators and 500 exhibitors, up from 75 creators and 150 exhibitors last year. Featured creators include Osman himself, Mythbusters‘ Adam Savage, Mark Rober, TheOdd1sOut, Emily The Engineer, NileRed, Allen Pan, Ev ..read more

Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here. Some people, when they start making the big bucks in their career, celebrate by buying their dream car. Others splash big on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Adrian Vazquez? Adrian Vazquez bought a couch. He’d wanted it for years. It’s a dupe of a Mario Bellini couch–still high quality, still expensive, but not quite as expensive as the genuine item. Vazquez is thrilled with it. When he rings us up for his interview, h ..read more

TikTok is fighting regulatory battles on both sides of the Atlantic. As it contends with a potential ban or divestiture in the United States, it is also facing renewed scrutiny from the European Union thanks to a new app called TikTok Lite. The TikTok Lite app arrived in countries like Spain and France earlier this month. According to a written description of the app shared by The Information, the new app looks to address TikTok’s “stagnant” growth in Europe by rewarding viewers when they take actions like watching videos and inviting friends to join. Those rewards can be redee ..read more

The CEO of the company formerly known as Twitter has confirmed that it is bringing its videos to a new screen. The X TV App is coming “soon,” according to a tweet shared by X exec Linda Yaccarino. Rumors about the X TV App have been swirling ever since X owner Elon Musk teased the channel last month. At the time, no details about the app were known publicly, but Yaccarino’s update includes a video preview and a rundown of planned features. The X CEO didn’t provide a specific launch date for the app. “We’re still building it,” she wrote. So what can viewers expect from the ..read more

The U.S. government has officially enacted a measure that will limit TikTok‘s power and reach — if it holds up in court. The ByteDance-owned app has vowed to wage a legal battle after President Biden approved a law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance does not divest it first. The divest-or-ban bill, authored by Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), is the latest in a series of Congressional attempts to control Beijing-based ByteDance and its buzzy short-form video app. It was introduced as a successor to the RESTRICT Act, which see ..read more

Gen Z venture capitalist Marshall Sandman is giving his friends a ride in his new Portal A-funded digital series. Portal A grabbed Marshall Will Pick You Up late last year as part of its $500,000 Moonshots program, where it invests in producing digital content. The series is one of nine projects announced as part of that slate, and now it’s officially live on YouTube. In each episode, Sandman–a New York City-based Goldman Sachs banker turned VC investor and entrepreneur–fetches a high-profile friend from the airport for “unfiltered and intimate conversations on business, love, and life,” per ..read more