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You know those sketches on Saturday Night Live where different celebrities pop in for a joke or two and half of the sketch is just applause breaks from the audience?

Now imagine that in Twitch streaming form, but rather than applause breaks, the comments are popping off.

That was the vibe of Streamer Prom, a nearly 5 hour stream that capped at 218,000 concurrent viewers on the primary feed on FunnyMike’s channel.

So after the success of this stream, and considering the past success of Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon 2, are these events the future of live streaming?

And, if so, why?

Also in this edition:

• How to grow social media by being awesome

• TikTok Ban is Another TACO

• Amouranth’s $38m year

• Creators Love Direct-To-Fan

• Job ops from Xponential Fitness, Sega of America, and Dr. Squatch.

• …and a dank creator economy meme by yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Going Back to Prom

The premise is simple: rent a fun location, decorate it like a high school dance, invite every famous person you can, and throw your own prom complete with suits, dates, and balloons, but with one heck of a lot more live streaming.

But what FunnyMike did with last Wednesday’s Streamer Prom turned a dance into a record-breaking stream, with over 490 million watch hours across 1,575 channels.

Check out these stats from StreamsCharts:

And this doesn’t even tell the whole story. During the prom, Opus Clip was clipping and amplifying key moments into short form content.

I don’t have full stats on these videos, but I’ve seen many clips and longform videos across YouTube, TikTok, and Reels with millions of additional views.

My long way of saying: this event went well.

So what was this, what can we learn, and is this repeatable?

What was it?

You can watch the full video here, but to break it down:

1. Parade of Characters: The joy of watching Streamer Prom was the low-fi, ‘walk through the crowd’ vibe of the production, which quickly became a Where’s Waldo? of celebrities. I spend all of my time thinking about this world and I didn’t recognize most of the people there, but thankfully the live chat was quick to identify. This led me to open dozens of tabs of other streams from the events, where I discovered sub-plots to the event.

2. An online scavanger hunt: Speaking of sub-plots, through these other streams I found myself searching through Twitch to find other angles of the event. I saw streams of creators complaining in line waiting for the event. I saw people on the inside who didn’t know what to do. I saw models trying to get time with FunnyMike for a quick dance video. And, of course, I saw the reactors watching the event and playing along with the ‘wait, who is that?’ of it all. It made for a fun hunt across Twitch.

3. A celebration of FunnyMike’s clout: Everyone wanted a moment with the master of ceremonies. As MacArthur (his real name) made his way through the crowd, celebrities lined up for selfies, collabs, and dances with the man himself. And the event also marked FunnyMike topping 1 million followers on Twitch, that happened on a live on-screen counter.

4. A soap opera: FaZe Jason brought Sakura to Streamer Prom. I won’t go into the backstory, but there was a lot of controversy here, leading his stream to also pop over 100,000 CCV for the majority of the stream. By the end of the event, while Jason streamed from his limo on their ride home, Jason’s stream was actually more than double the concurrent viewers of FunnyMike. This has kept the story going long after the event.

5. A branded video: Popeye’s was the key sponsor of the event, and boy did they get their money’s worth. People were eating Popeye’s, there were decorations on ‘Popeye’s orange’ color, FunnyMike took collab pictures in front of a Popeye’s step-and-repeat. In other words, all streams of the event became branded streams. And if we follow the ‘$1 per 1 watch hour’ model for branded streaming, they got $4.5m in value from the live stream alone (not counting the IRL value, the VOD views, or the shortform clips).

What can we learn?

1. Tentpole everything: This is an old lesson, but a good one. Creators should build to a big event, have a big event, then build to the next big event. This is how you always build anticipation for your audience and keep your brand from getting redundant. Logan Paul does this well with his fighting career. FunnyMike clearly understands the lesson.

2. Collabs don’t have to be so planned: Part of the fun of Streamer Prom was the lack of structure. Storylines popped up as the camera threaded through the thick audience. Sometimes, FunnyMike’s inability to find his cameraman became part of the plot. If you get a lot of famous people together and roll the camera, magic will happen.

3. Audience want to be part of something: Streamer Prom wouldn’t work if it wasn’t live. The immediacy of the event was the game. The comment thread became part of the game. The unpredictability was half of the fun. Creators are waking up to the power of live streaming, and now that both Mafiathon 2 and Streamer Prom found huge success, I imagine a lot more of these will be coming.

Is this repeatable?

Kind of.

The amount of planning, organization, infrastructure, and brand support made this event what it is.

Trust me. I saw it from the inside at Fixated.

The team (not me, I was on vacation two weeks ago during the hard part), worked their butt off to get this in the right place.

Without that kind of operational heft, events like this could be downright dangerous, with everything from equipment breaking to fans crashing the party to unreliable internet.

So the idea of eventizing is certainly repeatable, but creators will have to get a mature team to help, just like any event planning with so many moving parts.

In other words, if you want to do something like this, you should DM me.

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GROW 1%:

Phil Ranta’s weekly social media growth newsletter with one actionable tip to grow.

This week’s ‘Grow 1%’ is titled The Cinema of 'Awesome' and discusses how structure can take a backseat to building amazing, memorable moments in social media.

Here’s an excerpt, and you can read the entire edition in the link above:

Quentin Tarantino is my favorite film director.

Watching Pulp Fiction in high school made me a film nerd, and that led me to get a degree at the University of Michigan in Film & Video Studies with a focus on screenwriting.

But in my screenwriting classes, something struck me.

Pulp Fiction doesn't follow any of the guidelines from these screenwriting lessons.

There's very little structure or through-lines or clean rising/falling action or 'save the cat' character introductions.

So why do I like this movie so much more than movies that follow all of the rules, like D3: The Mighty Ducks?

I decided to write a paper about it, titled "The Cinema of 'Awesome'."

I got a B on it, but my point was solid.

Quentin Tarantino knows how to make moments, characters, soundtracks, and visuals awesome. So string those together into loosely-woven character moments, and you've got one of the best movies ever made.

Not clean. Compelling.

I'll take compelling over structured and boring any day.

Social media is no different.

You can follow every single best practice in the book, starting a TikTok with a visual hook, introducing a viral premise, using the most trendy audio, and looping perfectly. It may get huge views, but viewers will be bored.

Continue reading here.

FAME & FORTUNE:

TikTok remains unbanned as yet another extension was granted, this time with little fanfare. Now that the TACO acronym was minted (‘Trump Always Chickens Out’), this has just become another example of The White House kicking the can down the road in lieu of making a tough decision. Just admit it’s here to stay, already!

Controversial Kick streamer Amouranth revealed in a video that she made $38m from her one year with Kick and will now return to Twitch. Not sure if this includes her OnlyFans revenue, Fansly revenue, or bathwater sales.

A new report from Epidemic shows that 95% of creators use direct-to-fan models to engage followers. That means 5% of creators are really going to struggle with the growth of AI!

FanFix can’t stop, won’t stop! The fan subscription and content sales platform announced they topped $170m in payouts to creators. And if they can get Amouranth next year, that will put them over $200m!

INDUSTRY HIRING:

Currents Management needs a Talent Manager who doesn’t mind writing, “do you have a budget for this campaign?” in e-mails 100 times per day.

Tinder is looking for an Influencer Marketing Manager. Must like Instagram, long walks on the beach, and complying with HR guidelines.

Bombshell Sportswear wants an Ambassador and Social Media Senior Manager who knows how to deal with that creep at the gym who is always ‘doing sit ups’ right behind the treadmill.

MEME ZONE:

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this edition, give it a share and if you get someone to sign up, I’ll send you my ‘10 Rep-Friendly Ways to Monetize Today!’ deck!

Until next time, protect yo rep.