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TOGETHER WITH |
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It’s Friday and Google is hoping to out-luxury Meta with the release of Gucci-branded smart glasses. |
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Today’s News |
👋 Reed Hastings leaves Netflix 🤖 TikTok leverages AI for brands 💸 Nas Daily’s biz raises $27M 🛑 YouTube lets users turn off Shorts 💜 An OnlyFans vet launches Vylit
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THE BIZ |
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Reed Hastings is heading out. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.) |
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Co-Founder Reed Hastings is leaving Netflix |
The investor response: Earlier this year, Netflix’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery fell through thanks to a hostile bid from Paramount. |
You might think that would soften investors’ response to Netflix’s Q1 earnings report, since the streamer is no longer spending big on Warner Bros. Discovery—but that wasn’t actually the case. Despite beating Wall Street analysts’ revenue projections by nearly 50 cents a share, Netflix saw its stock drop 10% in after-hours trading. |
The call: There are two potential reasons for that reaction. For one, while Netflix is saving money on Warner Bros., it’s already committed to spending nearly $20 billion this year on other new programming, including live sports and video podcasts. That will push Netflix’s content costs up 10% from 2025, meaning less short-term profit for shareholders. |
The second reason is the departure of Netflix co-founder/former CEO/current chairman Reed Hastings, who announced during the Q1 call that he’ll exit the streamer’s board this summer to “focus on new things.” While co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters have led Netflix since Hastings stepped down as CEO in 2023, his departure could still be a shake for some shareholders. |
Sarandos and Peters, at least, had some comforting news to share with investors. Netflix defended its increase in content spending by pointing to the World Baseball Classic, which drew 31.4 million viewers in Japan to become Netflix’s #1 most-viewed title in the country. The streamer said the Classic also prompted its biggest single day of subscription signups in Japan, which contributed more subscription growth than any other country in Q1. |
Netflix also noted that it came in above analyst projections thanks to “slightly higher-than-planned subscription revenue,” and Sarandos assured shareholders that the failed Warner Bros. merger “really built our M&A muscle.” |
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The marketing industry’s most impactful event of the year returns to Miami Beach this month |
From April 27-29, POSSIBLE will unite thousands of industry leaders for three days of visionary speakers, curated experiences, and dynamic networking—all taking place at the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc in Miami. |
100+ speakers will deliver keynotes, masterclasses, workshops, and sessions spanning three industry pillars: Consumer Marketing & Communication, Business & Society, and Technology & Innovation. |
POSSIBLE is where passion meets business, inspiration breeds partnerships, and industry-defining deals are formed. |
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For the fourth annual edition of POSSIBLE, the event will welcome 5,400+ of the most respected and impactful business leaders and visionaries across brands, technology, digital, media, entertainment, and culture. |
Register for POSSIBLE to gain access to exclusive networking and programming hubs—including the Creator Economy Academy, The Yacht Club, Rising Talent Academy, and more—and hear from industry pioneers like Issa Rae (Hoorae Media), Ziad Ahmed (UTA), Dhar Mann (Dhar Mann Studios), Alexis Ohanian (Seven Seven Six), Mary Ellen Coe (YouTube), and Nicola Mendelsohn (Meta). |
Presented by Google in partnership with Pinterest, Salesforce, and Walmart Connect, POSSIBLE 2026 will be bigger and better than ever before. |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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Seedance 2.0 is coming to TikTok Symphony. |
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CREATOR COMMOTION |
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Nas Daily is jumping on the AI bandwagon. |
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Nas Daily’s AI ecom biz just closed a $27M round |
The funding round: Nas Daily (aka Nuseir Yassin) has raised a $27 million Series A for Nas.com, a platform he says will let “solopreneurs” turn one product image into an ecommerce business with a brand name and logo, digital storefront, and generated ads. |
The $27 million round was led by a $10 million contribution from Vinod Khosla, who became OpenAI‘s first institutional investor back in 2019 and has also invested in DoorDash, Affirm, Stripe, and Square. Nas.com’s Series A round also included participation from iAngels, 500 Global, V Ventures, Factorial Capital, and several other individuals. |
The entrepreneur: Yassin became a full-time YouTuber in 2016 and built his audience to 14 million subscribers before ultimately moving away from content. The entrepreneur told Business Insider that “[m]y next 10-year bet is completely different, and it’s about entrepreneurship on the internet.” |
That’s where Nas.com comes in. Like every other buzzy company these days, the platform is built entirely around AI. Yassin told BI that the goal is to help a “mom in Wisconsin” who “would never start marketing” because things like Meta Business Suite are (apparently) too hard for her to navigate. He also said Nas.com will help entrepreneurs find customers even if they don’t have large digital followings. |
The biz primarily monetizes by charging entrepreneurs a subscription fee that starts at $6/month, in addition to claiming a 5% cut of whatever they spend on marketing through its platform. Yassin said that so far, 3.5 million people have purchased products from businesses listed on Nas.com, and annual recurring revenue grew from $1 to $8 million in 2025. |
The history: This isn’t the first time Yassin has had an eight-figure funding round for a business. The creator raised $11 million in 2011 for his virtual education startup, Nas Academy. Originally billed as a Master-class like venture featuring various courses taught by digital creators, the product and features have since been incorporated into Nas.com. |
According to Nas.com’s site, there are ~350,000 businesses currently using its platform. |
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SHORT STOP |
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A timer to help you stop the scroll. |
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Sick of slop? YouTube now has a workaround that effectively turns off Shorts. |
The update: YouTube already lets its users put a hard stop on their watch time each day. Now, an update to that feature will let anyone who’s sick of YouTube Shorts set their short-form time limit to zero—effectively removing the format from their YouTube experience altogether. |
Users can set up that cap by navigating over to the time management tab in the YouTube app. The toggle first became available last year, but it now boasts a wider range of viewership options, with users able to set their Shorts activity as high as two hours or as low as zero minutes. |
As is often the case with this class of features, YouTube’s Shorts time limits don’t actually bar viewers from watching short-form content—meaning it’s not exactly correct to claim that this feature removes Shorts from YouTube. |
Instead, users who set their time limit to zero won’t see the Shorts shelf on the YouTube homepage and will receive a “time’s up” prompt when they watch the first Shorts clip in each browsing session (unless they choose to override previously set limits). |
The question: Even if YouTube’s latest feature doesn’t totally eliminate Shorts, users who have complained about the deluge of AI slop will surely relish the power to push away the TikTok-style format. While YouTube has tried to stay ahead of slop channels, it’s also continually undermined that effort by rolling out AI-powered creation features on Shorts. |
Letting users control their Shorts activity might be the next best thing to actually cleaning up slop, but it’s worth asking how this change will affect YouTube’s short-form viewership. |
The platform’s decision to loosen up its view-counting methods on Shorts has allowed the TikTok competitor to produce eye-popping numbers. Now that users can limit—or even outright erase—their Shorts time, will we see a significant drop in short-form viewership? |
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WATCH THIS 👀 |
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Introducing Vylit. |
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Former OnlyFans CEO Amrapali Gan wants Vylit to be “the HBO of social media” |
The adults-only platform: Former OnlyFans CEO Amrapali “Ami” Gan and her business partner Kailey Madger have a new platform for adult users and creators. According to a press release and this video by creator Michelle Sim, Vylit hopes to be “the HBO of social media.” |
The new platform will be filled with adult content and will require all of its users to be at least 18 years old—but while OnlyFans embraces full-frontal nudity, topless posts and “body-positive expression” will be as risqué as it gets on Vylit. (Find out more about the platform here.) |
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