YouTube's Creator Economy
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I met Jacklyn Dallas for coffee and crepes at Madame M near Bryant Park.
We both ordered coffee and the ridiculously rich Signature Milles Crepe. She ate half of hers; I finished mine.
Jacklyn is the founder of the YouTube channel Nothing ButTech, which has 222,000 followers. She does tech product reviews, trend stories and interviews.
She has interviewed Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple’s senior software engineer Craig Federighi and Oura’s CEO Tom Hale. Recent episodes have compared Samsung and Apple watches and the Rabbit R1 versus RayBan Meta.
It’s remarkable considering she is 22 and graduated from New York University four months ago.
Since she started making tech videos at 13, Jacklyn has created 474 YouTube pieces garnering 17 million views.
Often she shoots on location, which requires frequent travel. Earlier this week she was in Seattle shooting a piece on AT&T.
Her company is about to hire its first full time employee. She already employs contractors to shoot videos, edit tape and create thumbnail photos. Thumbnails, she explained, are key. “Why people click on a video is the idea and the thumbnail,” she said.
We talked about how content creators are disrupting the media and communications landscape.
She expects video in general and YouTube in particular to play a bigger and bigger role in how stories about the tech industry are told.
Her goal is to extend her focus beyond product reviews to do more content about how we use and experience tech in our day-to-day lives.
“Tech will be the vehicle to explore curiosity for myself and the audience.”
Meeting Jacklyn reminds me how technology has changed not only how we get news i.e. from a laptop not a printed newspaper, but also who creates it.
When I graduated college, you couldn’t be a journalist unless you were hired by a media company and media companies wouldn’t hire you without experience.
In the modern world you don’t need to be certified by an employer before you get the opportunity to interview the CEO of Google.
You just have to publish great content.
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BRIEF OBSERVATIONS
INTERNET SEARCH: Contrarian perspective on how AI will impact internet search.
MODERN WARFARE: If you haven’t been following the war in the Ukraine closely you might be surprised to find out how drones are changing the conflict, allowing Ukraine to bomb Russian airfields close to Finland. The “battlefield” is much larger than in the past. This is the future and it’s fairly terrifying.
OBESITY: Illuminating to see the long-term data on a trend we see incrementally with our own eyes.
TENNIS: Photos showing how the grass wears at WImbleton over the years highlight how the game changed from a serve and volley to the backcourt. A blog I read attributed it to the change in racket technology.
CARNEGIE: Thinking about No. 22: Good Showmanship!
