Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

There’s an ear-piercing war brewing at the mall. Claire’s, the biggest player in the market, has hit hard times, leaving room for upstarts to impinge on its territory. For 60 years, Claire’s has billed itself as a place for kids and teens to get their first piercings. The company says it has pierced more than 100 million ears since 1978. But after declaring bankruptcy in August (its second bankruptcy in seven years), Claire’s was acquired by the holding company Ames Watson for $140 million. These new owners have plans to turn the business around, including drastically shrinking its retail footprint which had ballooned to more than 1,000 stores. It recently annou…

Last week, Google released Project Genie, a powerful new AI-powered platform for videogame design. Project Genie, which is currently only available for Google’s AI Ultra subscribers, uses AI to build virtual worlds. That sounds interesting, if not necessarily revolutionary. Videogame developers already model and build virtual worlds all the time. Project Genie’s simple concept, though, belies the tech’s potential impact. The new system, and the Genie 3 model behind it, have the potential to forever change how videogames are built and played. Model the World Most videogames today rely on a handful of game engines to render their virtual worlds so th…

When India banned TikTok in 2020, YouTube responded by launching a short-form video feature with a similar user experience in the country. Less than a year later, that feature rolled out globally as YouTube Shorts, which allows creators to post 180-second-long swipeable vertical content. Today, YouTube Shorts has roughly 1.5 billion users and receives an average of 70 billion daily views. With TikTok’s future in limbo in the U.S.—a much-delayed ban is set to take effect on June 19—Shorts is hoping that TikTok’s audience of almost 2 billion people will see it as a compelling alternative. YouTube is already the second-most visited site in the world, and the platform ha…

With its goofy block lettering and bright colors, the MetroCard feels like a relic, which it sort of is—an early 1990s design, complete with gradients and drop shadows, that’s managed to stick around long enough to become one of New York’s defining symbols. At a time when generic minimalism and the sheen of AI-generated graphics have taken over, its unmistakable graphics feel refreshing. And the fact that a 31-year-old fare payment system is still in circulation when most tech today becomes obsolete in a matter of months is a remarkable achievement. But the end is near: on December 31st, the MTA will stop selling MetroCards and completely phase them out on an imminen…

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

The room is silent. All eyes are on you. Your heart races, but as you take a deep breath, confidence replaces the nerves. You begin to speak, not just to inform, but to captivate. Public speaking isn’t an innate talent; it’s a skill that can be mastered. With the right techniques, anyone can transform into a compelling speaker. Research shows that 77% of people experience anxiety around public speaking, yet confidence and clarity can be learned. I frequently speak publicly, addressing teams of executives, industry leaders, and students. As a seasoned financial services executive with two decades of leadership experience and the two-time author of Wisdom on the Way to…

Last year, when Canva used a rap song to promote its new suite of products for businesses, the reaction online was about what you’d expect. “Call 911 I’m having a cringe overdose.” “This is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fault.” The performance at Canva’s annual summit, Canva Create (Disclosure: Fast Company is a Create media partner), reminded many of corporate musical escapades of the past, like Bank of America’s adaptation of U2’s “One” back in 2006, or Randi Zuckerberg’s Twisted Sister-inspired ode to crypto in 2022. But for Canva, it drove attention and traffic to the brand. More than 50 million people saw the rap battle within 48 hours, which boosted social media…

Ugly might be the new cute: Just look at Labubu, a “kind of ugly” plush toy that has sparked a buying frenzy across the world, especially in Asia, reported CNN. People from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur flocked to shopping malls on Friday to get the latest edition of the oh-so-collectible furry, while they quickly sold out online. Inspired by Nordic folklore, the toothy stuffed animal has high, pointy, rabbit-like ears, big round eyes, and a mischievous grin with serrated teeth. Made by Chinese toymaker Pop Mart, Labubus come in so-called “blind boxes” the size of a hand, which keep the contents a mystery until the box is opened. Pop Mart, which sells collectibles, has …

Ann Hummond knew the office software like the back of her hand. Based in Yorkshire, England, she could untangle any spreadsheet snafu in her sleep. Over the past 23 years, she had worked her way up from a data entry clerk to her finance company’s administrative director, quietly becoming the person everyone relied on when things went sideways. She was, in short, indispensable. And then, one Tuesday morning last year, during a quarterly team meeting attended by directors, colleagues, and a team leader, her boss—who is nearly 10 years her senior—told her publicly, in a roomful of people: “You’re too old to do this job.” “I must have looked like a goldfish…

If a single type of building could define our present time, it would undoubtedly be the data center. Underpinning the increasingly online way we work, shop, and entertain ourselves, data centers provide the computing power and storage to handle all the Zoom calls, Amazon purchases, and Netflix streams a person can cram into their day. And now as compute-hungry artificial intelligence dominates the future of nearly every sector of the economy—and possibly society as a whole—the data center will become even more ubiquitous. A headlong data center building boom is already underway. One report finds that average monthly spending on data centers has increased 400% in the l…

For a while, the comforting narrative went like this: AI won’t take your job. But someone using AI will. So, all you had to do was to use AI, and even if you lost your job you could take someone else’s? The idea that you only needed to worry about AI secondhand—via another human—is in fact somewhat naive. AI is coming for your job directly. Not with fanfare or grand announcements, but through silent, pervasive creep: software agents booking meetings, writing reports, sending personalized emails, making decisions. There are even tools to send your digital clone to videoconference meetings, without people even noticing it’s not the real you—yes, an AI deepfake of your p…

As a potential TikTok ban looms in the United States (again), Substack is making (another) play for video creators to join its platform. Back in January, Substack CEO Chris Best wrote on his personal account that the company was “going to rescue the smart people from TikTok!” It seems he’s making good on that promise, as the company announced on Monday that it’s rolling out a scrollable video feed in its app. Given the timing of this TikTok-like launch, Substack appears eager to capitalize on the potential void left behind if TikTok is actually banned this time around. Substack first launched video in 2022, later introducing an in-app Media Tab in 2024. The latest…

Few apps are as inextricably linked to the iPhone as Apple’s Messages. Introduced with the original iPhone almost 18 years ago, the app (then called “Text”) has become the primary messenger for most iPhone users worldwide. It allows users to receive Apple’s proprietary iMessages, as well as RCS messages and old-school SMS messages. In recent years, Apple has introduced several new features to the Messages app and its iMessage protocol. Most recently, in iOS 18, the company allowed users to stylize text by bolding or underlining words, incorporated animated effects that make words shake or appear to explode, and enabled users to react to a message with any emoji. But …

The conversation about AI in the workplace has been dominated by the simplistic narrative that machines will inevitably replace humans. But the organizations achieving real results with AI have moved past this framing entirely. They understand that the most valuable AI implementations are not about replacement but collaboration. The relationship between workers and AI systems is evolving through distinct stages, each with its own characteristics, opportunities, and risks. Understanding where your organization sits on this spectrum—and where it’s headed—is essential for capturing AI’s potential while avoiding its pitfalls. Stage 1: Tools and Automation This is w…

Walking around the factory floor of Twincraft Skincare, outside Burlington, Vermont, there is the unmistakable scent of soap. The general manager points out the luxury lines and designer labels for whom they manufacture soaps and lotions, as well as the basic, inexpensive bars and bottles left on hotel room sinks. The factory runs two 10-hour shifts per day, four days a week, with an overtime option as needed. At over 400 employees, Twincraft is one of the top employers in the state. In the last few years, there’s been a boom in skincare products and, to meet demand, Michele Asch, Twincraft’s chief people officer, says they’ve had to hire over 180 people over the pas…

Lego just announced its first book nook: Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street. I was guessing this was coming sooner than later, with Lego’s ever-increasing focus on the adult market and the growing popularity of book nooks. The design is fantastic, full of the fine details you expect of high-quality book nooks, which are miniature dioramas that are designed to fit between books on a shelf. But, unlike those, you can actually take this off the bookshelf, unfold it into a three-building Victorian London street, and play with it. Conceived by Japanese artist Monde in 2018, book nooks often depict a street, a room, or some other structure inspired by a theme from a real boo…

OpenAI has named labor leader Dolores Huerta and three others to a temporary advisory board that will help guide the artificial intelligence company’s philanthropy as it attempts to shift itself into a for-profit business. Huerta, who turned 95 last week, formed the first farmworkers union with Cesar Chavez in the early 1960s and will now have a say on the direction of philanthropic initiatives that OpenAI says will consider “both the promise and risks of AI.” The group will have just 90 days to make their suggestions. “She recognizes the significance of AI in today’s world and anybody who’s been paying attention for the last 50 years knows she will be a force…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. In just a few short years, generative artificial intelligence has begun demonstrating its tremendous business potential. Stanford University’s latest AI Index report reveals that global corporate investment in AI grew nearly 45% in 2024 to reach $252.3 billion. With private investment in generative AI up 8.5 times over 2022 levels, forecasts suggest that AI could soon contribute trillions of dol…

Most F1 cars can reach speeds of well over 200 mph, but the newest automobiles in the F1 stable go much much slow. Built from 400,000 Lego pieces, the life-size Lego cars can drive 12 mph—not bad for a bunch of plastic bricks. To mark the start of a multiyear partnership, the Danish toy maker created 10 drivable, full-scale Formula 1 cars that debuted at the Miami Grand Prix. The racing series’ 20 competitors, including speed demons Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, drove the Lego cars at Sunday’s prerace Drivers’ Parade for millions of fans watching from the grandstands and on television. The “big build” cars took Lego builders a collective 22,000 hours ove…

The rise of artificial intelligence is transforming every industry, but it also creates enormous demand for digital infrastructure and natural resources. Data centers, the engines of this transformation, consume vast amounts of water and energy. A single hyperscale data center consumes up to 5 million gallons of potable water every day. In Phoenix, 58 centers together demand more than 170 million gallons daily, enough to ​​serve up to several hundred thousand households. This is the internet’s hidden water footprint, amplified by AI, cloud computing, and data-heavy services. Training a single large AI model in a Microsoft data center can require about 185,000 ga…

If you’re in need of some good and satisfying news, Chipotle has got you covered. The beloved burrito brand is bringing back its free burrito promotion for April 3rd’s National Burrito Day. According to the chain’s March 31 announcement, Chipotle Rewards members will once again be able to play the popular Burrito Vault game at UnlockBurritoDay.com. The game, which involves customers trying to guess exact burrito order combinations, is easy to play but comes with delicious prizes. Players will get four attempts to win BOGO (buy-one-get-one) codes. Each hour, the first 2,500 members to choose burrito orders with the correct ingredients will win free food. “Las…

The 4chan website is down, and continues not to load for many users, according to Downdetector. (Downdetector is a platform that monitors online services and internet-related issues, and is essentially a crowd-sourced outage reporting tool.) This outage comes amid unconfirmed reports on social media, including on Reddit, that the internet message board was hacked. Fast Company has reached out to 4chan for comment and did not hear back immediately. The outage was first reported on Downdetector at around 9:57 p.m. ET on Monday night, and peaked soon after around 10:12 p.m. ET, when 1,265 users reported the problem. Since then, users have taken to monitoring the pla…

As the 2025 Major League Baseball season gets into full swing, you’d expect the league to use its marketing muscle to hype the heroics of its biggest stars. But its anime-style ad campaign takes that idea to a new level. “Heroes of the Game” mixes the on-field superpowers of players like Shohei Ohtani, Paul Skenes, Julio Rodríguez, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge with the pop cultural artistry of anime hits like One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist. Created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, the league also partnered with Passion Pictures and Echelle Studios in Japan, as well as acclaimed animation director Hiroshi Shimizu, to make the work. The first ad features a whol…

When Sky Kurtz set out to grow produce in the desert via vertical farming in 2016, laying the groundwork for what became Dubai-based ag-tech startup Pure Harvest Smart Farms, “People thought we were crazy,” he says. “I was fearful, I would never get off the ground.” But Kurtz’s came at a time when the UAE was beginning to take the idea seriously and companies like Pure Harvest began cropping up. Over the past nine years, though, Pure Harvest Farms has become one of the sector’s biggest players. It has raised more than $450 million in funding, according to market analysis company PitchBook, and grows an array of crops that includes tomatoes, green vegetables, and berr…