Good morning, sharks. We've been burning time on the Y Combinator game where players review real pitches from applicants and guess whether they were accepted into the prestigious VC program.

So far, we've gotten about seven right...and eight wrong. Safe to say we'll stick to writing newsletters.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Is the era of making videos alone in your bedroom officially over?

YouTube media company Poppies Studios just launched a creator workspace with podcast studios, a film set, and event space in an 8,200-square-foot studio in California.

“This came from the freedom to not only shoot what we want when we want to, but also give our friends the opportunity to take swings and try cool projects without having to do a whole rental on their own,” Poppies Studios co-founder Hunter March told us. 

The fine print: 

Big picture: More businesses are getting into the content studio game. Walmart opened up a podcast studio in Tennessee this summer, and Whalar’s Lighthouse is opening its second creator campus in NYC this fall. 

March is positioning Poppies to be a more accessible space for early- and mid-career creators.

“I want Poppies to be known as the home for creators. Like MTV back in the day—at some point it was a dream for new artists to work for MTV or go on TRL,” March said. “I want to be a place where young creators want to work at Poppies and I want to price [the studios] and make it so appealing that they could do that immediately.”

Hashtag-blessed no more. Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok have started phasing out the feature that was a staple in 2010s content. 

The details: This summer, both TikTok and Instagram started limiting the number of hashtags users can include on posts. Both X CEO Elon Musk and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri have said hashtags are no longer necessary for discovery.

Why? Platforms don’t need them anymore. “As a type of metadata, [the hashtag] wasn’t controlled by a platform—it was created by the people, for the people,” Linguistics creator Adam Aleksic wrote in his most recent Substack essay, “Why platforms are killing the hashtag.” “By removing the hashtag, tech platforms are redistributing organizational power away from the users and toward themselves.”

Big picture: Platforms have more recently focused on improving their search bar functionalities, rendering hashtags less impactful on overall performance. 

Social strategy creator Jade Beason says that Instagram now analyzes other aspects of posts to correctly categorize them, like key words in creators’ caption and bio. This rearrangement of the algorithm makes it easier for more users to see a creator’s work.

Where does that leave creators? They no longer have to self-categorize their content—platforms do it for them, making it easier to find similar creators in their niches.

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YouTube has play buttons. Spotify has milestone awards. Now Instagram has “Rings,” a newly announced award for the platform’s top creators. 

How it works: A panel of 13 judges—including director Spike Lee, tech creator MKBHD, and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri—will select 25 winners across categories like sports, fashion, and entertainment. They’ll get a literal ring, plus access to customizable profile pages. 

Instagram said the program is meant to uplift creators’ content, but creators don’t seem sold:

Is it more important for platforms to recognize creators through awards, monetization, or both? Hit reply and let us know.