Good morning. Social media is now officially considered an environmental toxin in NYC, according to Mayor Eric Adams, right up there with guns and cigarettes. While NYC hasnβt implemented any rules around the new designation, it does make us wonderβ¦how might this impact creators? FYI: Creators are part of the cityβs creative sector, which accounts for 13% of NYCβs total economic output.

Jubilee Launches a Relationship App

Jubileeβs new appβs βLoveprintβ feature provides personal assessments aimed to give users insights on their relationship styles / Jubilee
Longtime YouTube channel and media brand Jubilee, which makes human interest videos on hot-button topics like politics and religion, has launched its first app: Nectar.
The details: Nectar is based on Jubileeβs YouTube channel of the same name, which explores relationships with videos like blind dating girls based on their dads and whether exes can fall back in love.
Video participants get a βLoveprint,β similar to a Myers-Briggs personality type for love and relationships. Jubilee made the Loveprint test available for anyone to take in 2022βand 1 million users took it within three months of launch, according to Jubilee founder and CEO Jason Y. Lee.
βOur audience is so captive with our content, we want them to be able to participate now,β Lee told us. βAnd we feel like technology is one of the things that we can really scale.β
Enter: the Nectar app, which is currently focused on personality and compatibility for anyone (regardless of relationship status), but Lee says it could evolve into a dating app.
βI think thereβs a reason why Gen Z loves horoscopes and personality tests. Itβs because they want to understand themselves better, and by proxy, other people. So we want [Nectar] to start there,β Lee said.
βNot too far down the line this could be a really exciting dating app that is built on a completely different foundation from competitors.β
Zoom out: Dating app satisfaction has dramatically fallen, and shares of Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, and OKCupid, have fallen 40% in the past year.
How would Nectar succeed? βOver time weβve recognized that people really trust us with that kind of vulnerability and we never thought about it as data, and we still donβt,β Lee said. βBut weβve learned so much from the hundreds of thousands of people that have joined the casting database and videosβ¦and weβre better able to understand where people are at right now.β

Creator Spotlight: F.D Signifier

F.D Signifier began the new year with admitting he almost quit YouTube as he navigated going between Black and whiter spaces / Illustration by Moy Zhong with photography by F.D Signifier
Video essayist F.D Signiferβs first upload of 2024 followed his typical format: analyzing Black media and pop culture. But it marked a new era, as Signifier spoke openly about tokenization and censorship on YouTube as his channel blew past 650,000 subscribers in 2023 while uploading just 12 videos.
βA big part of it [was], how can I communicate to my audience how the sausage gets made when I provide for them a video that entertains or educatesβ¦and they provide for me AdSense and Patreon dollars.β
Context: Signifier, a former teacher who doesnβt share his real identity online, began uploading videos in 2020 while pursuing a PhD in sociology.
He was a longtime fan of YouTube creators such as Lindsay Ellisβknown for her film and theater deep divesβbut saw a gap worth filling.
βIt was very explicitly the absence of Black voices [in the video essay genre],β Signifier told us.
As his videos took off in 2023, Signifier considered quitting YouTube due to the βunintended consequencesβ of his success: grappling with viewersβ (and the creator industryβs) perceptions of him while trying to βcontinue to relate to the Black spacesβ he still resides in.
Signifier credited creator-owned streaming startup Nebula as an outlet to upload longer, uncensored videos that he believes would either be buried by YouTubeβs algorithm or demonetized entirely.
We spoke to Signifier to hear more about his experience on YouTube, when weβll see more academics sharing their ideas via video essays, and more. Read our full conversation here.

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Ethan Chlebowski Launches Recipe Site βCook Wellβ

Ethan Chlebowski shared news of his new recipe site, Cook Well, by going through a pollo asado burrito recipe live / Ethan Chlebowski
Food creator Ethan Chlebowski announced his new website and cooking brand, Cook Well, on Tuesday, promising βthe cleanest recipe experience on the Internet.β
The vision? Take his YouTube audience of 1.9 million food lovers andβ¦
Bring them a free, online cookbook that evolves over time
Focus on driving viewers through YouTubeβnot βbloated,β text-filled recipe pages that optimize for SEOΒ
Offer a platform for other creators to share their favorite recipes and (one day) launch cooking products
βI want to make it the worldβs best cooking companyβ¦if weβre going to set up a system for a better way to read recipes, I want to have recipes from all over the world and work with creators from all around the world,β Chlebowski told us.

π₯ Press Worthy
Science creator Emily Calandrelli talks about STEM education at the White House.
Twitch is expanding its Partner Plus Program to include more streamers.
QTCinderellaβs Streamer Awards 2024 nominations are out.
TikTok is testing a cap on video lengths up to 30 minutes.
MrBeast is launching an action figure line.
Movie commentary creator Straw Hat Goofy is launching a podcast, Get Recβd.

π Thank You For Pressing Publish
The content weβre looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.
Read: NYT columnist Ezra Klein mourns the loss of Pitchfork and the recent wave of media layoffs, exploring what might be next for journalists online.
Watch: Food creator Halle Burns vlogs her time at culinary school in Goa, India.
Listen: Journalists Clare Malone and Bryan Curtis discuss how modern wartime coverage has evolved (and what newspapers will look like in 2024) on a recent episode of The Press Box.

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