New Hires, Merch & latest creator news

Welcome to the The Midweek Creator Roundup!

This is the midweek edition of Creator’s Digest focused on creator news.

I also write a deep dive on a single creator that goes out on Sundays. I’ve written about Emma Chamberlain, a TikTok talking dog named Bunny, Liza Koshy and more. Subscribe below to get that injected straight to your inbox:

With that, let’s juts jump into it!

New Hires & Signings Across the Creator Economy

Cameo gets some Magic

Former NBA star and arguably the best point guard in the history of basketball, Magic Johnson is joining the board of directors at Cameo. Johnson has long been involved in tech and operations after his playing career. He was the president of basketball operations with the Lakers from 2017 to 2019. Magic brings with him a unique experience as a player who connected with fans on and off the court. His expertise helps Cameo do just that, build lasting relationships with their customers. Magic is also joining Cameo as a creator wishing people happy birthday, fathers day and whatever other Cameo’s come his way.

WME signs Cloakzy

WME is on a wave of signings as of late. Last week, I wrote about them signing Nait Jones to their roster of talent and they just announced they are signing Dennis “Cloakzy” Lepore. Cloakzy is a twitch creator with 2.6M followers on the platform. He mainly plays Call of Duty: Warzone but is very good at Fortnite as well. WME is signing talent in many different arenas from Clubhouse creators to streamers to content creators - the idea is simple, sign the talent and help them build up their individual brand. The sell for the creator is wider access and a WME stamp of approval. The sell for WME is a new audience that they didn’t have access to previously. In addition to Cloakzy, WME also signed content creator Gina Darling, the host of the relaunched gaming network G4.

Netflix gets a new Editor-In-Chief

Michelle Lee will be joining the streaming giant as the new Editor-In-Chief working for marketing chief Bozoma St. John. Netflix has been slowly expanding it’s editorial and publishing team as they will probably start expanding into editorial content whether it’s email marketing or show related expansions remains to be seen but it’s clear they’re building a talented team of editorial folks who will always hit the “Yes I’m still here” button at home. Lee was previously at Allure as the magazine’s Editor-In-Chief.

Now onto the news!

Foootball is life! - Dani Rojas from Ted Lasso

Not really creator news, well kinda in a way. I was binging Ted Lasso this weekend and found that AFC Richmond, the fictional soccer team from the show has launched a merchandise store via Shopify! For those that don’t know, Ted Lasso is a show on Apple TV+ starring Jason Sudeikis and the new season is coming out July 21st exclusively. Personally, I’m a fan of anyone that sings their own theme song and for that reason, I’ll be getting a mug myself.

Got your tickets to the Twitter space?

Twitter has launched ticketed spaces and super follows. The social media company rolled out an application process a few days ago to let people have ticketed spaces for folks to listen into. Super Follows is a feature that was teased a few months ago in February but now is very much here. For a premium price, followers can pay their favorite tweeter (read creator) and subscribe to paywalled content including tweets, images, videos, etc. Imagine Patreon but on Twitter. For the low low prices of $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 per month, you can support your favorite tweeter directly thru Twitter with a Super Follow. Twitter will only take 3% of the creator’s revenue making it one of the lowest cuts a platform is taking only behind Clubhouse (which takes 0%).

Ed Sheeran is performing a TikTok Concert

For those that don’t know me, I’m probably the biggest Ed Sheeran fan ever. Only behind being the biggest Taylor Swift fan. Seriously, I challenge you to reply to this email with a song related question and I guarantee I’ll probably know it.

Anyway, after a multi-year hiatus that included Sheeran getting married to his high school sweetheart Cherry Seaborn and having their first child, a lovely baby girl, the Thinking Out Loud crooner is back with a new single, Bad Habits. The new single releases in just a few hours (as of this newsletter) and can be streamed everywhere. He’ll be performing the new track at the EURO 2020 show on TikTok along with a few classic tracks live on TikTok. Follow @edsheeran on TikTok to be notified when he goes Live for the massive stadium sized performance. You can find more details here.

Link In Bio Startup Koji launches an AMA feature

Koji, a link in bio startup launched an AMA feature. The app gives everyone the tools to create an interactive question & answer space on their Koji Link in Bio. It’s a way for fans to directly ask their favorite creators a question and get it answered by them. Many TikTokers will make videos for brands and say “Link in Bio” often redirecting their audience to their profile pages where they will click to the brand. Now, fans can go a step further and ask a question to their favorite creator from “whats your favorite color” to “why’d you move to New Jersey?” and anything else in between. When it comes to building a community of fans and interacting with them, this new AMA feature will let fans interact like never before and all done digitally. A very interesting drop from a great company. Link in Bio companies have started to gain more and more traction over the last year and the whole space has ballooned.

Kaya Yurieff from the Information looked at this space a week ago and covered a lot of the major players - you can read her writeup here.

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