Good morning. With Halloweekend coming up, I’m trying to do some out-of-the-box costume brainstorming.

Hit reply and share your most niche internet costume idea (I might just dress as my favorite one).

— Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Two years ago, Colin and Samir sat down with head of Instagram Adam Mosseri about the future for creators on the platform. During that interview, he told them:

“Connecting friends is an adjacent thing to short-form video. Short-form video is an adjacent thing to long-form video. But long-form video and connecting friends aren’t adjacent. The reason I am not interested in pursuing long form video in a meaningful way is because I don’t want to erode our heart, our core reason, to exist [connecting with friends].”

As of this morning, long-form video has officially arrived on Instagram (again). 

Starting today, Instagram is rolling out “Features” on a test basis—allowing creators to upload horizontal videos like podcasts, vlogs, and interviews up to 90 minutes long. 

“We want to be the most culturally relevant platform, and to do that, we need to show up where people are,” Mosseri told Colin and Samir in an exclusive interview.

Here’s everything Instagram dropped today →

Here’s what’s coming soon →

Here’s what’s not changing →

Big picture. Long-form creator video has become the industry’s center of gravity, but the barrier for entry has always been platform-native discoverability.

Instagram has long been the place to build cultural relevance and a following, but moving that following to other formats has been challenging for many creators. Now, Instagram creators don’t have to build an audience from scratch to show them longer content.

Short-form video already travels through DMs and group chats. Now, a Reel sent to your friend acts as an in-app recommendation to a creator’s long-form video, too. With Features, your friends can go from short-form recommendation to long-form interaction in just one click. 

Listen to Adam Mosseri talk through the updates on The Colin & Samir Show.

According to a recent Nielsen study, cable TV is losing to streaming, streaming is losing to YouTube, and YouTube is trying to maintain its advantage.

Today, Netflix’s most recent attempt to bring creators to their platform comes in the form of its first creator-ensemble comedy series: Minimum Wage. 

Produced by American High Digital, the series is written, directed, and performed by seven comedy creators—including SNL cast member Grace Reiter.

Here’s how a comedy group went from YouTube show to Netflix series:

“Streamers now are more aggressive in trying to figure out how to work with creators, knowing that there really is no difference between a social media creator and a traditional screenwriter or actor,” cast member Aidan Micho told us. “Whereas ten years ago, the stuff that we’re making might have been lumped into the influencer category just because it's on social media.”

Netflix launching this comedy series is both an offensive and defensive maneuver. 

While Netflix watch time is falling behind YouTube by 8.1%, streaming as a whole is beating standard cable TV by over 30% (Nielsen).

What’s in it for creators: YouTube series still need brand support or independent financing to get made, so Netflix’s upper hand is giving creator-led shows the budget to expand beyond what they are able to make independently. 

“YouTube is actively growing into the main role that television fulfills,” Micho said. “It’s not just an incubator for proof of concepts that then go on a streaming service. It is where the audiences are. [Through projects like Minimum Wage], Netflix is definitely doing a good job of trying to figure out how to keep television shows on [traditional] streaming services.”

Though Minimum Wage has not disclosed its budget, a workplace comedy series that runs around 15 minutes per episode is likely a fraction of the cost of other popular Netflix shows like Wednesday or Stranger Things. 

Minimum Wage is a low-lift way for Netflix to stay tapped into internet culture and bring a built-in audience to the platform without breaking the bank.

Sponsored by Shopify

In 1976, Samir’s dad moved to America and opened his first clothing shop, Jasmine, in Venice Beach. Fifty years later, he still designs and sells clothes. He describes his secret to success this way: “I didn’t sell garments. I sold conversation.”

Today, that conversation happens online, and his online presence was due for a refresh. Raga’s new site is relaunching soon, and we built it with Canvas, Shopify’s store builder: a design workspace where you build and edit your store simply by describing what you want. Here’s how:

If a 76-year-old can start a store in an afternoon, so can you. Try Canvas on Shopify.

Creators are once again being asked to decide where AI is an asset to their creative process, and where it’s a liability. 

On Friday, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey unveiled Dessa: a new AI tool that talks (and laughs) like a human.

“Talking with it feels like talking with a person…full of emotion, nuance, pauses, and a natural cadence,” Dorsey posted on X. 

Over the weekend, his post gained over 13M views with a response that ranged from people asking when it would be available for download, to others calling Dessa “dystopian.”

How creators could use it: Dessa could be an unlock for podcast creators. Tone, timing, and emotion make a podcast or interview work, and text-based AI struggles with all three. Dessa could make possible:

The risks: AI slop content and deepfakes are already a problem across platforms. 

A Kapwing study found 59% of a new TikTok user’s “For You” page is AI slop content, and the trend persists across apps.

To combat this, creators have started businesses to help other creators detect AI and protect their likeness, as platforms draw (and redraw) the boundaries for what content can and cannot be monetized. 

For now, the debate is theoretical. Dessa isn’t public yet and Block is giving early access to a small group of AI safety researchers, with no release date announced.

Our AI conversation persists at HQ, and we want to know where you stand: