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It's Friday and Netflix is throwing its hat into the video podcasting ring. After sealing a deal with Spotify, the streaming service is rumored to be pursuing exclusive content from iHeartMedia. |
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Today's News |
💸 Snap unveils a $400M AI deal 🛍️ Spontaneous shopping is on the rise 🧑⚖️ Logan Paul escapes a lawsuit 🛒 Emma Chamberlain hits eBay 🗓️ 20 Years of YouTube: In 2025…
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SNAP DECISIONS |
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A $400M Perplexity deal will bring AI search to Snapchat |
The $400M deal: Snap is joining forces with Perplexity—an AI firm known for its contextual answer engine—to bring an AI-powered search function to users around the world. |
In addition to reporting Snap's Q3 earnings, representatives for the company revealed that Perplexity will pay $400 million to incorporate its engine into the Snapchat app. That integration will come in the form of a chat window, through which a bot will provide AI-generated answers to user prompts. Revenue generated from the deal is expected to begin showing in Snap's 2026 earnings reports. |
This isn't Snap's first venture into conversational AI, but shifting consumer attitudes suggest that now is the time to re-up its investments. While Snap's My AI bot drew negative reception from the public shortly after its 2023 launch, the company said in its Q1 2025 earnings report that My AI usage was up 55% year-over-year. |
The earnings report: As for the rest of Snap's Q3 2025 earnings report? The company exceeded analyst projections with $1.51 billion in quarterly revenue (a 10% year-over-year increase) and 477 million daily active Snapchat users. |
Snap execs credited several in-app features as key drivers of that growth, including the Snap Star program and Spotlight (a TikTok-like format that has received significant investments). Compared to last year, 4x as much Spotlight traffic is coming on content posted in the last 24 hours, reflecting improvements to the app's recommendation engine. The most impressive stat to come out of Snap's report, however, concerns its OG format: altogether, Snapchat users created one trillion selfie Snaps in 2024. |
The response to those reveals was impressive. Thanks to its strong quarter and the promise of its Perplexity partnership, Snap's stock price rose 25% during after-hours trading. |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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COURT OF LAW |
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A judge just dismissed the CryptoZoo lawsuit filed against Logan Paul |
The lawsuit: A Texas judge has ended the class-action lawsuit filed against Logan Paul over his NFT project, CryptoZoo. |
Judge Alan D. Albright dismissed the case with prejudice, writing that "Paul's depiction of the project as one backed by a 'massive team' and funded by 'like a million dollars'" wasn't fraud, but "puffery" (aka a "boasting statement upon which no reasonable buyer would be justified in relying"). |
The dismissal was filed Oct. 29, 2025, over four years since Paul first pitched CryptoZoo as a hybrid NFT/game project. At the time, the idea was that CryptoZoo-the-NFT-collection would launch first, allowing people to buy digital "eggs." Then, once CryptoZoo-the-game launched, the eggs would hatch into jpegs of animals that generated crypto $ZOO tokens. |
CryptoZoo-the-NFT-collection debuted in September 2021, and nearly 3,000 eggs were minted with a starting price of .1 ETH. But CryptoZoo-the-game never came out—and without it, the NFTs (which had tanked in value) didn't have much functionality. |
Dissatisfied buyers were stranded until early 2024, when Paul offered to buy back $2.3 million worth of CryptoZoo. The catch was that anyone who accepted the offer had to agree not to sue. We don't know how many people took the payout, but we know of at least one who didn't. In 2023, Don Holland teamed up with Houston-based attorney Tom Kherkher to file the class-action suit against Paul. |
The response: Two years later, that lawsuit has run its course. Paul responded to the dismissal in a recent video, during which he celebrated 'clearing his name' and pointed to Albright's observation that collaborators/co-defendants Eduardo Ibanez and Jake Greenbaum "sold large amounts of [CryptoZoo] for an immediate and large profit." |
In contrast, Paul said, "I never made a dollar…I wanted to make the best game ever. It failed. But there's a huge difference between failure and fraud." |
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THE BIZ |
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eBay wanted Emma Chamberlain's old clothes. So did her viewers. |
The trend: Secondhand shopping is on the rise. Analytics firm GlobalData anticipates that the worldwide apparel resale market will reach $367 billion by 2029, meaning secondhand apparel sales are growing at 2.7x the rate of firsthand sales. |
That's good news for online resale platforms like eBay, Vinted, Depop, Poshmark, and Whatnot (which has raised nearly $500 million of funding this year). But it also means the industry is getting increasingly competitive. So, how can resale platforms stand out to sellers and buyers? |
The auction: Whatnot's approach has been to embed itself within the creator community, enticing YouTubers, TikTokers, and more to sell items in high-energy, livestreamed auctions. Now, eBay is making its own inroads into the creatorverse by teaming up with vlogger Emma Chamberlain to auction 100 items from her personal fashion collection. |
Chamberlain is known for sporting luxe brands, so that charity sale—which ran from October 30 to November 6—included a solid lineup of items from designers like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Prada, and Gucci. All items were listed for a $0.99 starting bid, with final proceeds going to Save the Children. |
By the end of the auction, every item had sold. Most went for hundreds of dollars, but some were downright steals (like this pair of ERL jeans that went for $26). Other pieces crested the $1K mark, including a Prada shoulder bag ($1,375) and a red Louis Vuitton Coussin PM Epi Leather bag ($1,075). |
The context: This isn't the first celebrity charity sale eBay has held. In June 2024, the platform partnered with Elton John, David Furnish, Donatella Versace, Brandi Carlile, Betsey Johnson, Robin Roberts, and Andy Cohen for a sale that benefited John's AIDS foundation. Now, eBay's collaboration with Chamberlain demonstrates that legacy platforms are increasingly embracing creators on the same level as Hollywood greats. |
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WATCH THIS 👀 |
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20 Years of YouTube: In 2025, broken spaghetti is the perfect ragebait |
In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we'll examine the trends that have defined the platform—one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series. |
The ragebaiters: After spending months detailing the last twenty years of YouTube history, we've officially made it to 2025. So, what does the world's favorite video site look like in the present day? |
Internet culture has become so fragmented that it's impossible to encapsulate the YouTube of 2025 in a single video. Over the last year, however, two channels have consistently played off each other in a way that perfectly explains today's online ecosystem. |
Bayashi—a Japanese creator with over 33 million subscribers on his flagship channel—has been a mainstay in our Global Top 50 ranking since the advent of YouTube Shorts. The two Italian creators behind Lionfield, meanwhile, have spent the last few years entertaining a fanbase that now includes 15.6 million subscribers. |
Bayashi and Lionfield came up separately, but have since developed a symbiotic relationship rooted in a playful game of ragebait. |
Their dynamic is simple: Bayashi cooks grotesque takes on Italian food, and the Lionfield guys critique him for it (with varying degrees of distress). As negative as that collab may seem, it's an ideal dynamic for the wide-ranging tastes of present-day YouTube viewers, as it appeals to fans of cooking, comedy, and (most importantly) outrage-fueled entertainment. |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. |
