TOGETHER WITH

It's Wednesday, and a petition signed by nearly 100,000 users (including Snap CEO Evan Spiegel) has achieved its goal: Snapchat is officially resurrecting the 2D Bitmoji.

Today's News

🐡 Pufferfish builds on viral marketing
🏆 MrBeast shares the spotlight
🌎 Reposters climb the YouTube charts
🍩 Springfield comes to Fortnite

THE BIZ

Photo credit: CJ Sanciangco for Pufferfish

Remember that Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest? Its organizer is opening an agency.

The agency: Over the last year, publications like The New York Times have heralded the death of viral marketing—but Anthony Po (aka YouTuber Anthpo) isn't sweating it. The creator-slash-entrepreneur has teamed up with creative producer Talia Schulhof (who he met in 2023 while they were both working for MrBeast) to co-found a creative marketing agency called Pufferfish.

With Pufferfish, the duo is out to prove that they can turn one-off virality stunts into a calculated, consistent marketing strategy.

❝

"We have a finger on the pulse of what it takes to go viral."

Talia Schulhof (via Business Insider)

The context: While virality doomsayers may question the sustainability of Pufferfish's mission statement, Po himself has already demonstrated the impressive impact of well-executed viral marketing.

Though his eponymous YouTube channel has nearly two million subscribers, the creator is best known as the principal organizer of a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest that went viral in October 2024. The irreverent competition took the internet by storm and continues to reverberate more than a year later.

Post-Chalamet, Po provided a more direct proof of concept when he worked with Crocs to pull off a stunt that involved placing the brand's shoes on statues across New York City. Now, the creator plans to concoct attention-grabbing escapades on behalf of other companies through Pufferfish. As Schulhof explained, the duo's agency aims to help its brand clients operate at "the pace at which the internet is moving."

Po and Schulhof's creative backgrounds and Gen Z bonifides may be the key to pulling off that goal. Creators who become entrepreneurs are set to control the future of the creator economy—and Pufferfish's founders are perfectly positioned to be the Lisan-al-Gaib to their industry's Fremen.

🌟 SPONSORED 🌟

Brands are using clipping to explode on social media. Here's the scoop:

As short-form video continues to dominate social media, the world's top brands are tapping into a new marketing tactic: clipping.

By editing long-form content into viral clips, brands can repurpose existing campaigns into TikToks, Shorts, and Reels—while reaching more viewers, faster. The problem: clipping editors and agencies charge tens of thousands of dollars. Hulu alone recently spent $40,000 on a single clipping campaign.

So, how can brands break into clipping without breaking the bank?

Industry leaders like Visa, Nvidia, Univision, and iHeart Media have found the solution in OpusClip.

Explore OpusClip success stories

As the industry's #1 clipping platform, OpusClip automatically…

Identifies viral moments within your social media library and/or uploaded footage
Turns those moments into short-form clips
Schedules or posts the resulting TikToks, Reels, and Shorts across platforms

OpusClip's infinite, AI-powered memory bank can instantly find everything you've ever said, done, or captioned on-screen with a quick text prompt—and produce 7x more content for a fraction of the cost.

Get started with OpusClip →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

T-Series and MrBeast shared the #1 slot in our latest Top 50 Most-Subscribed YouTube chart after adding one million new subscribers each during the first full week of November. (Tubefilter)
Newsletter platform beehiiv plans to unveil a series of new features during its 2025 Winter Release, which will kick off at 1 PM ET on November 13. RVSPs are open now. (beehiiv)
Threads is testing out a new "podcast preview" feature designed "to make it easy for fans of your threads to find your show." (Engadget)
Disney is reportedly losing roughly $4.3 million per day amid its carriage dispute with YouTube TV. (The Verge)

📈 TOP 50 MOST-VIEWED

Globalization is shaking up YouTube Shorts

The strategy: This week, the channels topping our ranking of the world's 50 most-viewed YouTube channels hail from Australia, India, and South Korea. But the home countries of Top 50 hubs don't always tell the whole story.

In fact, multiple channels in this week's ranking are devoted to translating and re-distributing content originally intended for audiences outside their home countries. Take Slick Slime Sam: while the channel is based in Thailand, its most popular videos are kid-friendly Shorts that appear to have been produced in former Soviet republics and later reposted with Thai-language titles and video descriptions.

Slick Slime Sam claimed 375.3M views during the week of Nov 9. (Data from Gospel Stats)

The trend: That strategy has become increasingly common amid the rise of short-form content. Channels based in Asian countries that are well-represented on Shorts (such as South Korea, India, Japan, and Vietnam) often see their content targeted for exportation. When videos originating in those nations feature little-to-no talking and universal themes like family, they're even more likely to reach another region's YouTube viewers.

The impact: That trend may be ethically dubious, but it's nevertheless sent reposters like Slick Slime Sam skyrocketing up the charts. Without doing anything other than repurposing content originally intended for a different culture, the Thailand-based hub made its first appearance in the Global Top 50 at the start of November—and hit nearly ten billion lifetime views in the process.

WATCH THIS 👀

Donuts are falling from the sky on Fortnite's Springfield Island

Springfield Island: Fans of Springfield's famed yellow family are in for a treat. As of November, Fortnite has officially unveiled Springfield Island, a Simpsons-themed expansion that includes six new mythic weapons, weekly animated shorts, and a Scratchy boss fight.

Fans interested in those perks can take part in a new, faster-paced, 80-player Battle Royale—if they're prepared to dodge falling donuts and errant chainsaws. Check out the latest Fortnite x Simpsons short here.

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