YouTube's Netflix Makeover, Jasontheween Donates, Amazon Layoffs, and Hololive's Holoday
Oh, hey, it's November! Two months left in 2025, so it's time for everyone to lock in! We just wrapped up October, and as expected, the numbers were down compared to September. Hours watched decreased by 1.2%, while average viewership dropped by 4.4%. Some of that can be attributed to Kai Cenat's subathon in September, but it was buoyed by the FaZe members streaming their month-long subathon. Now that said, a decrease is not surprising, as historically, September through December tend to trend negatively in viewership. If there's any hopium take, it's that November is usually a rebound month, meaning we should see an increase in viewership compared to the two previous months. Time will tell!
With that, though, let's jump into last week's stories and updates!
🟪 TWITCH
- Twitch had another round of layoffs as part of Amazon's major 14,000 layoff. It appears to have affected a few dozen people connected with Twitch.
- Twitch is experimenting with a promotion where gifting 10 Subs unlocks some Bonus Bits (the amount varies by the user).
- Some users can claim a 30-Day Trial of Twitch Turbo. The standard trial is usually 7 days.
- Twitch and Amazon Ads tested the new Live Shopping feature. For the time being, it appears limited to brands willing to advertise on Twitch. I'd prefer seeing creators able to add/share products with it.
- Head of Community Mary Kish and CPO Mikey Minty were interviewed by CGM about Twitch's mainstream appeal.
- Twitch has removed the five-monetized-account limitation that it added last week.
- I posted a video going through Twitch's plans for AI.
This is a great deal! You can get 3 months of Audible for $0.99 per month! I recommend using the credits on "Stream Big", "Steal Like an Artist", and "The Power of Habits 2.0". Best of all, your dollar goes a long way in supporting my work, and you can cancel at any time!
🟥 YOUTUBE
- The Copyright tab has been renamed to Content Detection. It now covers both Copyright Detection and Likeness Detection.
- Livestreamers can now Opt Out of the Top Fan Leaderboard.
- YouTube has new enforcement for content that includes Graphic Violence in Video Games. This may impact a wide range of creators, so I posted a video about it.
- The YouTube TV app is getting a Netflix-like makeover.
- YouTube added a few Halloween-themed gifts for vertical livestreams.
- YouTube is increasing thumbnail size from 2MB to 50MB.
- YouTube is offering employees voluntary exit packages as it reorganizes its product teams to focus on an AI-centric future.
- Adobe has partnered with YouTube to enable easier creation of Shorts.
- YouTube Shorts now allegedly generates more revenue per watch hour than long-form content, as revenue surpassed $10 billion in a single quarter for the first time.
- The Like Button now has 20 fun animations on YouTube.
⬛ TIKTOK
- TikTok has increased the sub split to 70%, and will offer a 20% bonus if you can reach 100,000 views in the last month while also posting three sub-only videos.
- TikTok is launching Smart Split, a tool that automatically clips, reframes, captions, and transcribes long-form content into multiple short videos.
- A new AI Outline tool on TikTok is launching to help generate titles, outlines, and hooks for videos.
🟦 DISCORD & TWITTER X
- Discord is enhancing its clipping experience with a new editor and a new library. They're also launching a voice-activated clipping function.
- Twitter X is beginning the process of retiring the Twitter.com domain.
🔲 OTHERS
- Whatnot has raised $225 million, valuing the livestream shopping platform at $11.5 billion.
- Kick is launching Drops (functionally a duplicate of Twitch Drops).
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