Good morning. Quinta Brunson—who got her start creating sketches on YouTube and worked her way up as a producer and personality at BuzzFeed—is taking on one of the biggest feats in entertainment this weekend: hosting Saturday Night Live. The coveted SNL hosting gig follows Brunson’s two Golden Globes for her work on Abbott Elementary in January. What a year, and it’s barely spring.

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Creator League Becomes Pregame Special for March Madness

For the second straight year, sports media brand House of Highlights is holding the finals of its Creator League—a 2 vs. 2 basketball competition featuring top sports creators—during the same weekend of the March Madness Final Four.

The Creator League finals, which are set to take place outside Houston on Sunday, will pit sports creators D’Vontay Friga and Lolo Fitzmo against Jenna Bandy and Cam Wilder for a $50,000 grand prize. The NCAA Mens’ Basketball Tournament will hold its own championship at Houston’s NRG Stadium the following day.

Here’s how the Creator League works:

• Starting in January, six teams each played three matchups, which were live-streamed weekly on the Creator League YouTube channel. Playoffs happened earlier this month, culminating in this weekend’s championship game.

• In between games, creators appeared in other content—like skills challenges and reaction videos—on the Creator League channel.

Big picture: House of Highlights is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which also owns broadcast rights to March Madness. Because of that, Creator League has secured regular promotion throughout the NCAA Tournament and its primetime games.

FYI: According to Tubefilter, Creator League has earned more than 125 million views and added 411,000 new followers across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram since the start of its season in January.

ByteDance-Owned Lemon8 Climbs U.S. App Charts

Earlier this week, Lemon8, the ByteDance-owned photo and shopping app, hit No. 10 overall on the Apple App Store’s U.S. charts, besting both Pinterest and LinkedIn.

Context: Lemon8 is gaining popularity while fellow ByteDance-owned TikTok is facing a potential ban or forced sale from U.S. lawmakers.

• FYI: Before this week, the Lemon8 app had never ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S., according to TechCrunch.

How it works: Lemon8 is like a hybrid of Instagram and Pinterest, with shoppable photos and captions and hashtags users can follow. It has the same recommendation engine as TikTok, according to the NYT.

How are creators using it? 

• Lemon8 appears to be engaging in a good deal of paid user acquisition, reaching out to creators to bring them on the app as recently as last week.

• Lifestyle creators like Ese Neuseri, Shantania Beckford, and Eleanor Wood have been invited by the app to become “launching creators.”

• Launching creators who upload 5–7 high quality images with lengthy captions of 100–300 words are eligible for payouts from Lemon8.

Looking ahead: While TikTok awaits its fate in the U.S., creators are exercising more skepticism about the viability of apps touted as alternatives.

Sponsored by Track Club

Inside One Creator's Path From Wedding Photographer to YouTuber

Taylor Pendleton never thought she'd one day become a YouTuber.

After spending years as a wedding photographer, her career path took a turn when she had the opportunity to work on a brand’s YouTube channel.

Fast forward to today, she has branched out on her own—Pendleton has her own YouTube channel, graincheck, where she explores the world of photography and has gained over 25,000 subscribers in less than a year.

In this article, created in partnership with Track Club, we break down:

• How Taylor started her journey as a creator

• The process she uses to go from idea to published video

• How she incorporates music into her content and uses it to elevate her storytelling

Check out the full post here.

Unpacking Niko Omilana and JiDion's Rollout Strategy

Pranksters and sketch comedy creators Niko Omilana and Jidon “JiDion” Adams recently collaborated to produce “The Biggest Menace”—and the prank show’s staggered release schedule looks optimized to dominate the charts in the coming month.

Here’s what their rollout strategy looks like:

• Two episodes per week (one Sunday, one Wednesday).

• The first two episodes dropped this week on Omilana’s channel. The next two will debut on Adams’s channel (and so on).

• The series isn’t sponsored, but its creators are using a signed PS5 giveaway to drive subscriber growth (so far, Omilana is up 170k and Adams is up 130k since the first episode).

FYI: Episode 2 has already reached #2 on YouTube’s Trending page.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Chess creator Hiraku joins Kick streaming.

• Corridor Digital’s web content is now on smart TVs.

• Yes Theory is offering scholarships for its upcoming creator course.

• Caleb Simpson, the creator known for viral apartment tours, shares insights on retention and growth strategy.

• Famous Birthdays redesigns its website with a new talent portal.

• Cocomelon collaborates with Puma.

• 25,541 social media creators love this free newsletter.

📚 Thank You For Pressing Publish

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

• Vox’s Rebecca Jennings dives into why so many creators are offering online courses—and how difficult it is for consumers to assess which ones are worth the cost.

• Fitness creator Joe Holder weighs in on the ebb and flow of wellness trends like ice baths and how they might apply elsewhere: "The point is to do short term hard things to create an expansion in long term comfort zones. Use that in other areas in your life...application of said diligence to withstand brief discomfort to get better."

• Edutainment channel Wendover Productions explores negativity bias and how both journalists choose the stories they cover and consumers pick the content they consume.

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