Editors Note:

Welcome back to Creator's Digest - couple quick things:

1) we're on Beehiiv now! yay!

2) This is the first article of 2023

3) thanks for reading and subscribing, appreciate you!

The Pre-Roll

📸 No more cheating with ChatGPT

🏢 The Stocks Superbowl (Meta, Snap, Amazon, Apple)

📱Grilla raises $3M seed round for skill-based tournament

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 TikTok gets new head of product from Douyin

No more cheating with chatGPT

If you don't know what chatGPT, I strongly recommend you Google it (ironic huh?). For the purposes of this article, let's just call it a search chatbot. You can have a conversation with it about anything and it'll give you very well-informed answers.

Naturally, in the wrong hands, this tool has been used by some students to do their homework more efficiently. Have a question on a quiz? Ask chatGPT for the answer. Need some code to be written out? Ask chatGPT. Got an essay to write about the medieval times comparing King Henry VIII to Napolean Bonaparte? Ask chatGPT.

Well, the creators of chatGPT have just released a anti-cheat tool called antiGPT. Just kidding but it's basically a system that scans the submitted text to see if it was written by human or machine. Some of you readers might be too young to remember but it's quite similar to turnitin.com, a website used when I was in grade school to see if the submitted text was similar to other people's submissions. TurnItIn would highlight similar looking parts in red and then you could see how much of your paper was similar to someone else's. If you were past a certain threshold (typically around 70%), it's likely the person plagiarized their assignment.

The tool itself is free and will help teachers provide better education for their students, you can check it out below:

Why This Matters: AI is being a staple in everyone's lives and education is just one use case. As more people learn about how to use AI for good, better use cases will come about. I'm waiting for the day when more people learn on their own instead of having a traditional university or classroom.

The Stocks SuperBowl

This week is the superbowl for stocks. Yesterday, Jerome Powell gave his annual press conference where, as expected, he raised rates by 0.25% or 25 basis points. This affects mortgage rates, inflation and many other economic factors. He also said don't expect any cuts in 2023 which means cost of things is only going up.

Many companies are expected to report earnings later this week and some already have, here's a quick snapshot:

I'll mention a few creator stocks below as well as some links to other folks who write more in-depth about stocks and finance.

• Snap: Shares fell 15% after reporting. Q4 was shy of $1.3B, lower than expected, essentially flat for 2022. They're expecting a 2-10% drop for Q1 2023 revenue. This is the 4th straight quarter of losses for Snap.

• Spotify: Shares went up by 4% after reporting. MAUs grew to 489M, a 20% YoY growth from last year in the same time period. Spotify expects to grow premium subscribers (up by 14% to 205M) and invest more in original content.

• Meta: Shares grew 25% after reporting. This was mainly due to the company's buyback announcement to the tune of $40B dollars. Meta still has billions of dollars invested in the Metaverse and expects it to pay off. Revenue was slightly down after reporting but Meta is looking at a"year of efficiency" in 2023.

As you can see, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Sony are expected to report earnings later today and tomorrow thus concluding a wild superbowl week for stocks and investing.

To stay up to date on investing, finance, stocks and more, I recommend these newsletters and accounts on social.

@admaniexplains, @eWhispers, @kylascan

Grilla raises $3M seed round for gaming

Competitive gaming has seen a skyrocket of user growth over the last few years. Enter Grilla. It's a platform where users can compete while also wagering on their games. Think of playing with your friends but the winner gets the money and it's a all-in-one platform. So, imagine playing 1v1 or a 100 person battle royale like in Fortnite with everyone having to pay to pa

Players can put down their own wagers and then play. It's a new way of playing with friends while also making money. The company was in beta for months to 20K users and is now publicly available. CEO Evan Kaylin says users can wager on any game including "golf, backgammon, bowling, chess, basketball or just about anything else."

The Miami based company has a built-in wallet system where users can load in money and also get payouts. Tusk Venture Partners lead the seed round for the company and the company plans on expanding by monetizing off of their product launch in the coming months.

Why This Matters: Competitive eSports have been on the rise and the big barrier to access has always been organization and logistics of tournaments. The best players come together for the League of Legends championships or a Fortnite Battle Royale but what if you want to just play with your friends? Grilla makes it so that gamers can use the platform to experience an all-in-one wagering and compete in any skill-based game.

This will change the way that gaming is done and make it easier for people to make money playing games.

TikTok gets a new head of product

Fiona Zhi Ying has moved from VP at parent company, Bytedance to head of product development at TikTok.

The move is interesting as TikTok grows to monetize more of it's product and hit ambitious revenue goals in 2023. The company has focused mainly on TikTok Live over the last year seeing record revenues from the new product offering and has no plans of slowing down.

Ying will head of product development and she'll oversee a few key areas of the business including core product and livestreaming. Both areas are of course very important to the company and will be the focus for the app.

TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi is expected to report to US congress in early March amidst data privacy and security concerns. As of today, 32 states have banned TikTok on government devices.

Why This Matters: TikTok is a dominant force in social media. From short-form to long-form content, TikTok has had a prolific impact on every day society in the last 2-3 years. From trending music to new creators, shuffles at the company and a shift toward live streaming means some changes may be coming to the app. The CEO reporting to Congress will hopefully clear up some misconceptions about the app and how the algorithm works. Personally, I love TikTok and think it'll continue to shape the future.

Closing Remarks

1) This is the first article on beehiiv and the first one of 2023, if you have any feedback at all, DM me on Twitter @CreatorsDigest.

2) If you want to be a writer for the Digest or have any tips for stories, DM me!

3) Thank you so so so much for reading this far. My goal is to hit 500 subscribers (I'm 120 away) by the end of February. Please share and subscribe to the Digest below. Share it with a friend, thank you!