YouTube, Instagram, SoundCloud, and other online platforms are changing the way people create and consume media. The Verge’s Creators section covers the people using these platforms, what they’re making, and how those platforms are changing (for better and worse) in response to the vloggers, influencers, podcasters, photographers, musicians, educators, designers, and more who are using them.
The Verge’s Creators section also looks at the way creators are able to turn their projects into careers — from Patreons and merch sales, to ads and Kickstarters — and the ways they’re forced to adapt to changing circumstances as platforms crack down on bad actors and respond to pressure from users and advertisers. New platforms are constantly emerging, and existing ones are ever-changing — what creators have to do to succeed is always going to look different from one year to the next.
YouTube is a hit on TVs, and Meta and TikTok are looking to get in on that battleground, The Information reports. What will launch first: Instagram for TV or Instagram for iPad?
[theinformation.com]
My Picun F8 Pros are not as good as the AirPods Max. But they’re much cheaper — and constantly on sale.
The incredibly weird saga of the ordered, then reversed, then passed, then upheld, then ignored, then ignored even harder attempt to ban one of America’s most popular social networks continues — as it will continue until US-China tensions cool down, everyone forgets it ever happened, or the heat death of the universe.
Streaming platforms might be having a hard time bringing on new subscribers, but according to Nielsen’s most recent Gauge report, services like YouTube, Pluto TV, Roku, and Tubi overtook traditional broadcast TV and cable in terms of viewership for the first time last month.
The video platform is launching a new “open call” feature that allows creators to effectively audition for brand partnerships. Companies can publish campaign briefs to the YouTube Partner Program hub where creators then submit video content for the brands to review and approve, which may prevent smaller creators from being overlooked.
Instead of making the “o” in Shutterstock look like a viewfinder, now it has “ripples” coming off the top and bottom to signal the “impact” of the brand, the company announced today. You can see the new logo compared to the old one below.
It’s a major turn in the high-profile dispute between Baldoni and Blake Lively that spiraled into an entire genre of social media content. Baldoni had sued Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for $400 million after Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment. A judge also dismissed Baldoni’s defamation suit against The New York Times, filed after its coverage of Lively’s claims.
In the coming weeks, Instagram will show creators weekly and monthly reports with stats about post views and their follower count. It’s also launching shareable “celebrations” notifications that appear when creators reach certain milestones, such as hitting 10,000 followers.
The company that owns the biggest sewing pattern brands — Simplicity, Butterick, McCalls, and Vogue — has been sold to a liquidator, per the Craft Industry Alliance. That’s troubling news for those of us that sew and prefer physical patterns, but there’s also a concerning knock-on effect: the company owns the last large-scale tissue printers in the country.
A few years ago I wrote about the painstaking efforts to preserve sewing patterns and fashion history. I suspect that work is now even more urgent.
Angelo Sotira’s display, called Layer, is designed to house a kind of “generative AI art,” which TechCrunch explains involves artists writing their “own software to create digital AI artworks that change over time.” The display comes with a dedicated GPU capable of rendering “infinite variations” of generative art in full resolution.
The head of the AI video platform on Hollywood, copyright, and the future of filmmaking.
CEO Chris Best drops that fact onstage at The Information’s “Future of Influence” event in Los Angeles. He also says Substack was “accidentally cash flow positive” in the first quarter of this year, but isn’t planning to be profitable soon. “We’re focused on growth,” he says. “It turns out that when you do that, it makes the business grow really well, too.”
The platform is globally releasing a self-service “Pre-Release” feature for Artist accounts that allows musicians to easily promote forthcoming album releases. Fans can automatically save unreleased albums to their Spotify or Apple Music libraries so that they don’t miss the album drop and can listen to them instantly upon release.
After launching Photoshop for iPhone in February, a beta Android app is now available to download via Google Play. Much like its iOS counterpart, Photoshop for Android includes many features from the desktop version, including layers, masks, brushes, and Firefly generative AI tools, but with a UI optimized for mobile devices.
Adobe says all features are free to use while the app is in beta, and that more are “coming soon.”
ICYMI, the livestream of a bald eagle nest in California’s Big Bear Valley is mesmerizing. Eagle-eyed viewers are anxiously waiting for the two twelve-week-old eaglets to fledge the nest, where they’ve been carefully raised by parents Jackie and Shadow since hatching in March.
The nest is perched about 145 feet above Big Bear Lake, so it’s a hair-raising prospect. But just yesterday, Sunny caught some serious air. Will this weekend bring the big day?
If you’re a celebrity promoting a new movie or your latest album, you used to follow a standard playbook of late night shows, magazine cover stories, or daytime talk shows. Now you have to do all that and eat chicken wings with YouTubers or give your hottest take while riding the subway. The New Media Circuit is a powerful driver of views, likes, and comments — but does it actually sell anything?
[vulture.com]
That’s according to Nielsen’s media distributor Gauge report, which tracks how much time viewers spend watching TV across the networks and streaming platforms owned by different media companies each month.
In April 2025, Nielsen found that YouTube once again earned the top spot by capturing 12.4 percent of viewers’ total time watching TV. It’s followed by Disney (10.7 percent), Paramount (8.9 percent), and NBCUniversal (8.2 percent).
Recently, the comedian behind Adam Ruins Everything made a promotional video for World that he’s since taken down. Now, he’s addressing blowback he received by calling his ad for the eyeball-scanning crypto company “one of the dumbest things I have ever done” and saying what he “honestly” thinks about the company.
One the highest-profile callouts of Conover’s video came from Rebecca Watson, aka Skepchick, who briefly summarizes World’s problematic exploits in her critique.
Six months after the coupon hunting extension Honey was accused of cheating shoppers and influencers, it appears the PayPal-owned tool is still losing users. According to 9to5Google, the number of Chrome extension users continues to drop — at one point 20 million people used the extension. Now, that number is down to 15 million.
Unionized workers at Politico allege the company violated its contract by using AI-generated content in a live blog — and are escalating their complaint to arbitration this summer. The union says the AI-generated summaries contained factual errors and language that’s off-limits for writers. The result of arbitration could set an important precedent for an industry that’s seen countless AI disputes in recent years.
