Party people, If you missed it or if you're on the fence, I'm brainstorming the idea around a private community where creators, operators, and investors can connect with one another (not pitch each other). Reply to this email if you're interested.

Top Clicks: The top clicks in the last send were Li Jin's post on The Creator Economy Crisis, the launch of Media Kits, and how creators run outreach to brands.

Today's Highlights:

• Penguins aka diving deeper into the metaverse
• Snap creators are doing the dash

Talking Creators

The creator economy is in crisis. Now let’s fix it

Despite the metaverse getting buzzword status and being mentioned 20x times on Facebook's earnings call, it's a very real and fast approaching next step into social, commerce, and the internet as a whole. You can see the early stages of the metaverse when you look at companies such as Roblox and projects like Decentraland.

The best examples of what will be possible in the metaverse starts with NFTs. For those of you not glued to Twitter like myself, NFTs are quickly becoming a way to obtain access, connect with a community, and gain status and large sums of money. One of the most popular NFTs at the moment is a pudgy penguin that managed to get the New York Times treatment.

More on creators

• Overtime goes deeper into NIL with their latest signing of Ceyair Wright.
• MKBHD partners with Vox for his Waveform podcast.
• Dr. Disrespect is launching a new creator-focused game studio.

Talking Social & Platforms

Snapchat Creators make the move to other platforms

Money only will take you so far when you're competing for creators attention. Snapchat seems to be coming to that realization as Snap creators transition to other platforms as the company's Spotlight program changes up its payout process.

You can court creators to your platform with money but that doesn't mean you can convince them to stay. Multiple companies have copied TikTok; however, as mentioned in previous sends, you can't copy the community and creative culture that's created on those platforms.

More on platforms

• Kyra releases their latest TikTok trends report.

Gems

• Rise of the text meme: Text memes are taking over Instagram.
• One agency to rule them all: Meet the DTC agency most likely behind your favorite products.
• The crypto opening: Fred Wilson, aka "AVC", is back with another gem on the opening to bring crypto mainstream.
• Hack but give it back: A crypto hacker stole millions and gave it all back.

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