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Meta's $1.4 Trillion Problem Is Your Problem 📱

Aug 24, 2026

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7 min read

Meta's $1.4 Trillion Problem Is Your Problem 📱

Meta's finally getting sued for an amount that isn't a rounding error for them. $1.4T for knowingly hurting kids with their product and saying, "Nothing to see here." But there's a stupid amount of evidence that they always knew there was something to see here. But these trials, whether Meta wins or loses, are about to change the face of social media for a while.

Phil Ranta

THE LATEST

Aug 17, 2026

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6 min read

10 Creator Companies You're Sleeping On 😴

My team at Fullscreen once made me a shirt in Game of Thrones text saying 'Q4 is Coming'. It's always been a bit of a mantra. Depending on the study you read, between 30% and 40% of influencer marketing budget is deployed in Q4, so you can think of the rest of the year as the season leading up to the Q4 World Series. While you still have a few weeks left, think about getting some of these great companies on your side.

Aug 3, 2026

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7 min read

Even HBO Is Running a Clip Farm Now 🎬

It's usually safe to assume Hollywood will be about 5 years behind the internet. HBO is proving they're only about 2 years behind when it comes to clipping. Is clipping here to stay or is the market already saturated?

Jul 27, 2026

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20 min read

50 Creator Economy Trends for 2026 🧐

Remember Buzzfeed quizzes? Let's do one for the creator economy. Honor code. I'm going to list what I consider to be the top 50 creator economy trends happening in 2026. No cheating! Count the amount you're hip to and I'll give you a score at the end. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Streamer University Is a Hit Factory 🎓

Kai Cenat built the thing Hollywood forgot how to make: ways for new talent to break into the industry. Streamer University has resulted in many of the most exciting new social media stars from the past few years: Tota MC, Rakai, Yonna, Snowcone. If these names mean nothing to you, it's time to catch up! Let's talk about what Kai is doing, why it works, and how you can play.

The $1 Billion Creator List Is Actually Bad News 💰

For the first time, Forbes' Top 50 creators cleared a combined $1 billion in earnings. Champagne, right? Not so fast. The top 10 took home over 60% of that money, and the gap between the mega-creators and everyone else is widening at the worst possible time. Let's talk about what this means for the creator middle class, and the reps who serve them.

The Social Media Child Safety Debate 👶🏻

We all want children to be safe, right? But are social media bans really about child safety or government controlling speech? There are loud voices on both sides but, most importantly, if you couch any issue in something as popular as 'child safety' the citizenry is likely to be on the side of the bill. Is there a middle-ground to be reached?

What Happened at VidCon? 🤨

VidCon 2026 is in the books and we're all in 'hot takes on LinkedIn and email follow-ups' zone. And with Cannes looming large over creator economy conferences, there were a ton of takes to be taken. I'm mirroring the format of my last issue preparing for VidCon to talk about what I saw, what the leaders were talking about, and the future of the conference.

Your VidCon 2026 Survival Guide 🎪

Every year I write a version of this, but this year I wanted to dive deeper. Are you going? Do you know what you're going to do? Is everyone giving you bad advice? I won't. This is it. This is the whole game:

How Reps Actually Know What Brands Pay 🤫

There's FYPM, and it's essential, but what happens when deals aren't 'flat fee' anymore. There's no Glassdoor for brand deals. No Kelley Blue Book, no Zillow estimate telling you what a 1M-subscriber gaming creator's mid-roll is "worth." The entire pricing layer of this industry runs on backchannel texts and "hey, what'd they offer you?" DMs. And this week, a report dropped that's about to make that whisper network a lot harder to read.

Creators Go Hollywood, Hollywood Goes Internet 🔄

Stephen Colbert's CBS show ended and he immediately set up @colbert on YouTube and TikTok. Meanwhile, the last few weeks involved Jay Shetty getting $100m to go to Netflix and Spotify, Guy Fieri and Travis Kelce announced YouTube shows, The Sidemen got an Amazon Prime cooking show, Netflix announce real-time syndication of The Breakfast Club, and Spy Ninjas is betting $25m that they can go Hollywood. What does this cross-pollination mean for creators and creatives?

StreamElements Shutdown Looms 📵

How often has the creator economy heard this story: company gains traction, raises nine-figures from huge investors, announces shutdown a few years later. There are a few companies in the market today that lay somewhere on this path! But StreamElements had 23 million users, a really useful tech stack for streamers (especially earlier in their growth), and a consistent flow of brand deals. This wasn't some fly-by-night operation. So what can we learn from this?

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Agents, managers, and business-savvy creators! This newsletter will give you the top news, strategies, and interviews relevant to creator representatives from Phil Ranta, who has been a 'creator manager manager' for over a decade!