Nate

If you're a YouTube creator, you need to read this. 🚨 The CEO of YouTube just dropped his 2024 letter. I've read the entire thing and think it's crucial every creator listens to his words. Here's 4 key takeaways + my opinions on each: Takeaway #1 - YouTube is embracing AI content creation whether you like it or not Neal Mohan is betting big on AI content creation tools, with the goal of 'leveling the playing field'. My take: I'm all for new AI tools. I don't think this is a move to replace creativity (or creators), but just make it faster and easier for new creators to get content out. Takeaway #2 - Shorts are not slowing down. They are the fastest growing media format in the world. Shorts right now are getting over 70 billion views a day. That number doesn't really mean anything to me, but it's impressive lol. What's more interesting is just last year the number of channels posting shorts grew by 50%. That's insane. My take: I don't think this really is news to anyone, but for a while a lot of people thought shorts would fail or follow the same fate as stories or community posts. Nah. Shorts = part of YouTube forever. Takeaway #3 - YouTube is becoming TV, the living room growth numbers are insane Here's an incredible stat, the number of channels who get the majority of the viewership from TV in the last 3 years grew 400%. TV viewership is growing at a frighteningly fast rate and Neal is doubling down. My take: I've been saying this for a year or two now, but we need to stop just thinking of YouTube as an app on a phone, and think about it as a streaming service on a 50 inch tv too. A lot of my clients are getting the majority of their views and revenue from TV viewership. Takeaway #4 - No one can touch YouTube when it comes to creator monetization. Over 3 million creators are in the partner program, and in the last 3 years YouTube has paid out over $70 billion dollars. My take: There's been a lot of talk about X paying creators now... which is awesome, but YouTube is still so untouchable here. The true 🐐. -- Shoutout to @nealmohan. It's awesome to hear what the leader of our platform is thinking. RT and like to share this. I'll pick a couple of people who do and send them something cool.