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Deep-ish Thoughts
We learned the hard way, so you can do it the smart way.
The Why’s of TikTok
The Why’s of TikTok I saw the headlines about the TikTok deal on Thursday and didn’t rush to say anything. I wanted to see...
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YouTube’s Pied Piper
YouTube’s Pied Piper MrBeast is the pied piper of kids on YouTube. He marches them from videos to merch to candy to sweepstakes to...
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From Stacks to Stack — App Layer, Ads, FAST, and Live
From Stacks to Stack — App Layer, Ads, FAST, and Live When Warner Bros. Discovery announced the HBO Max rebrand to “Max” in April...
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The Great Acceleration: Why Time-Based Moats Are Dead
The Great Acceleration: Why Time-Based Moats Are Dead AI didn’t just speed up software; it collapsed time as a source of defensibility. If your...
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People, Not Packets — The Hardest Part Is Identity & Profiles
People, Not Packets — The Hardest Part Is Identity & Profiles When HBO Max became “Max” in May 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery promised a...
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One Stack or Bust: The 18-Month War for Streaming’s Future
One Stack or Bust: The 18-Month War for Streaming’s Future Pull-quote: This isn’t “integrate carefully.” It’s consolidate decisively—one app, one backend, one identity graph....
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The YouTube TV-Univision Fight Exposes Streaming’s Bundle Problem
The YouTube TV-Univision Fight Exposes Streaming’s Bundle Problem YouTube TV is facing one of traditional television’s ugliest battles, and it reveals why streaming platforms...
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PR All The Way Down
PR All the Way Down: Why AI Can’t Tell Corporate Myth from Reality How artificial intelligence amplifies business mythology because the entire information ecosystem...
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No Bars, No Benefit
No Bars, No Benefit Why a MrBeast Phone Company Is the Wrong Kind of Creator Power TL;DR: Know your customer — the bill payer, not the fan. A...
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Why YouTube’s NFL Stream Was Actually a Win
Why YouTube’s NFL Stream Was Actually a Win The real story behind those “disappointing” international numbers YouTube’s first NFL stream is getting roasted for...
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Disney’s COPPA Deal Isn’t About $10M. It’s About Who Controls the Defaults.
Disney’s COPPA Deal Isn’t About $10M. It’s About Who Controls the Defaults. When a trusted kids’ brand runs on someone else’s settings, the platform’s...
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White Hat, Black Box
White Hat, Black Box When Big Tech “Helps” Education It sounds like a win for access: hundreds of classic Sesame Street episodes are coming...
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Instagram Didn’t Ship an iPad App — It Put a TV at the Front Door
Instagram Didn’t Ship an iPad App — It Put a TV at the Front Door A Reels-first tablet UI makes the distribution strategy visible....
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The Hidden Infrastructure Layer That Will Define Subscription Commerce
The Hidden Infrastructure Layer That Will Define Subscription Commerce The subscription economy has hit an inflection point. Billing is easy. Orchestration isn’t. Most teams...
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The Business of Fake Friends: A History of Exploiting Loneliness
The Business of Fake Friends: A History of Exploiting Loneliness How 75 years of manufactured intimacy led to the children’s crisis we face today...
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The Sameness Trap: Why Platforms Reward Conformity Over Greatness
The Sameness Trap: Why Platforms Reward Conformity Over Greatness In a recent episode of Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify,...
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The Kids Aren’t Alright
The Kids Aren’t Alright Platforms profit from children. Parents profit from platforms. Snapchat’s stock just tanked. A new class-action lawsuit claims executives misled investors...
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Jake Paul’s Circus Can’t Touch This: Bundesliga’s YouTube Power Play
Jake Paul’s Circus Can’t Touch This Bundesliga’s YouTube Power Play While Jake Paul was parading around Studio City selling another pay-per-view circus dressed up as...
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Dear Jim, Don’t Fuck Around With the Cuban
Dear Jim, Don’t Fuck Around With the Cuban Every morning, I walk the hills above my home. The road ends where the Santa Monica...
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Chrome’s Future Isn’t for Sale — If It Were, It Should Belong to Everyone
Chrome’s Future Isn’t for Sale — If It Were, It Should Belong to Everyone Last week, Perplexity claimed it wanted to buy Google Chrome...
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Placeholder Products
Placeholder Products What Roku’s Howdy and Fox One tell us about the future of direct-to-consumer streaming Two new streaming services were announced this week....
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fractional leadership + the outsider advantage
fractional leadership + the outsider advantage big companies. small companies. the pattern is the same: leadership waits too long to bring in senior strategy...
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Superbundling: The Coming Platform Wars
Superbundling: The Coming Platform Wars Everyone in streaming talks about “bundles” like they just invented it. Bundle services, reduce churn, call it innovation. That’s...
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The Gates Were Power
The Gates Were Power “There’s something sacred about walking through the gates of Paramount, Warner Bros, Sony, Fox or Disney.”— Gary Lucchesi, producer (Million...
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Everyone’s a Platform. No One’s in Control.
Everyone’s a Platform. No One’s in Control. Stephen Colbert is out at CBS.Substack just raised another $100 million.Ben Thompson mapped how AI removed the...
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The Platform Wars: Beauty on LinkedIn and the Battle for Creator Loyalty
The Platform Wars: Beauty on LinkedIn and the Battle for Creator Loyalty Unilever, TikTok, and Instagram just revealed where the creator economy is headed...
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The AI War Is Here. Here’s How Creators and Small Businesses Can Win.
The AI War Is Here. Here’s How Creators and Small Businesses Can Win. AI is changing everything about how content gets made, distributed, and...
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Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is FAST: Rethinking the Next Wave of Streaming
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is FAST: Rethinking the Next Wave of Streaming In an age of infinite content and zero patience, everything feels like...
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Creators: The Game Is Changing. Are You Ready?
Creators: The Game Is Changing. Are You Ready? AI, algorithms, and Big Tech are reshaping the creator economy at warp speed. If you’re not...
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From Studio Systems to Solo Creators: How Music, TV, and Games All Follow the Same Curve
From Studio Systems to Solo Creators: How Music, TV, and Games All Follow the Same Curve A quiet revolution has been reshaping the creative...
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AI, Generalists, and the New Tipping Point
AI, Generalists, and the New Tipping Point A few years ago, I read Range by David Epstein and found it compelling. The core idea...
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The Platforms Never Really Loved Creators — They Just Needed Them
The Platforms Never Really Loved Creators — They Just Needed Them For the better part of a decade, creators were the beating heart of...
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Tariffs, Tight Wallets, and the Creator Economy Squeeze
Tariffs, Tight Wallets, and the Creator Economy Squeeze Tariffs. Inflation. Flatlining fan spend. The headlines make it sound like a macro story. But zoom...
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Netflix, Fungible Creators, and the Shrinking Pie for Everyone Else
Netflix, Fungible Creators, and the Shrinking Pie for Everyone Else Netflix’s new move into video podcasts isn’t just about diversifying formats. It’s about owning...
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Are Movies Really Back? Depends on Who You Ask
Are Movies Really Back? Depends on Who You Ask Lately, there’s been a lot of noise about Hollywood’s big comeback. The headlines are glowing:...
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For Gen Z and Gen A, Creators Aren’t the Alternative—They’re the Default
For Gen Z and Gen A, Creators Aren’t the Alternative—They’re the Default A new Deloitte study just confirmed what many of us already knew...
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