Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Up in the Cascade Mountains, 90 miles east of Seattle, a group of high-ranking Amazon engineers gather for a private off-site. They hail from the company’s North America Stores division, and they’re here at this Hyatt resort on a crisp September morning to brainstorm new ways to power Amazon’s retail experiences. Passing the hotel lobby’s IMAX-like mountain views, they filter into windowless meeting rooms. Down the hall, the off-site’s keynote speaker—Byron Cook, vice president and distinguished scientist at Amazon—slips into an empty conference room to have some breakfast before his presentation. Cook is 6-foot-6, but with sloping shoulders that make his otherwi…

Headlines about a shredded cheese recall affecting more than a quarter of a million cases of various products have been making the rounds for the last few days, understandably alarming consumers. Yet the recall itself is not new, despite only being widely publicized at this time. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Back in early October, a company called Great Lakes Cheese Co of Hiram, Ohio, reportedly issued a large-scale recall that impacted a range of shredded cheese products. The recall was initiated after Great Lakes Cheese was informed by one of its suppliers that some of its “Low-Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella” may have been contaminated …

The year is quickly coming to an end, and that means tech platforms are tripping over themselves to roll out their year-end recaps—all hoping to capture the virality that Spotify’s Wrapped year-in-review recap commands each year. Already in December, we’ve seen Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, Amazon Music Delivered, and YouTube Recap, with more, like the popular Snapchat Recap, set to debut in the coming weeks. One of those debuts has occurred today, as well. Popular chat platform Discord has now released its personalized Wrapped-like recap: Discord Checkpoint. Here’s what to know about it and how to view yours. Discord announced Discord Checkpoint 2025 Di…

The way consumers search is changing faster than the industry expected. This holiday season, many shoppers are looking for gifts inside AI platforms, rather than retailer sites or traditional search. They are asking natural questions like: “Find me a cruelty-free skincare gift for sensitive skin under $100.” “What are good gift ideas for a three-year-old that are safe and durable?” “What are the safest, nontoxic treats for my Golden Retriever?” This shift is already measurable. Adobe Digital Insights reports a 4,700% year-over-year increase in retail visits driven by AI assistants between July 2024 and July 2025. At the same time, click-through rates from SEO …

While digital live shopping has been popular for years in Asia, the phenomenon has only recently begun to take off in the U.S., thanks in large part to the rise of retail disruptor Whatnot. The platform’s cofounder and CEO, Grant LaFontaine, shares how his team has managed to evoke the feel of in-person shopping inside an online experience, and how Whatnot’s breakthrough is influencing other retailers and brands. LaFontaine also digs into the startup’s response to deep-pocketed rivals like eBay, and why he believes the viral Labubu trend is here to stay. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief R…

Which terms best represent 2025? Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a word of the year. Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. Pandemic, lockdown, and coronavirus, for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022’s goblin mode, permacrisis, and gaslighting. This year’s slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts—when words like w00t, blog, t…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Baiju Shah is constantly bridging different worlds. His formative years were shaped by observing his mother, who trained as a commercial artist, and his father, who was an engineer. As global CEO of agency AKQA, he leads an organization that deploys creativity and technology on behalf of cl…

In Apple’s new holiday ad, “A Critter Carol,” a group of woodland puppets frolic in a wintery forest to a wildlife-themed parody of the Flight of the Conchords’s song Friends. Every element, from the puppets to the set and even the ad’s typography, was rendered using practical effects. The ad was directed by TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL)—a bespoke global agency that partners only with Apple—and shot on an iPhone 17 Pro. It appears to be building on a larger marketing theme for Apple. Just this November, MAL worked with the company to create a new visual identity for Apple TV using real glass props and colorful lighting. This kind of work stands out in a marketi…

If you grew up pre-Y2K, chances are you’re familiar with the concept of a lava lamp. It’s much less likely that you’ve ever encountered a lamp made out of literal lava. That’s the basic description of a series of three lamps made by the luxury Italian lighting company Foscarini. The company’s new Alicudi, Filicudi, and Panarea lamps, designed by Italian father-and-son design team Alberto and Francesco Meda, are formed from actual lava rock sourced from Mount Vesuvius. To own a piece of Italy’s iconic volcano, you’ll have to fork over $866 for any one of the lamp models. The real lava lamp may be pricier than its ‘70s predecessor, but that’s thanks to the labor…

As the festive season gets into full swing, young corporate employees are taking to social media to flex their high-budget company holiday parties. “My company just brought in a whole glam squad to do our hair and makeup in the office before our holiday party,” one TikTok creator posted. The video shows an office full of employees getting their hair curled and makeup touched up. “Sometimes I love corporate America,” she wrote in the caption. The comments were full of people desperate to know which company, and industry, she works in. “My company has an $11 per person food budget,” one wrote. “This is pre-covid tech company energy and I love it for you,” ano…

Stargazers and scientists are getting a holiday present from the cosmos this week. 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar comet, will get “closest” to Earth on Friday, December 19, as part of its journey across the galaxy. Let’s break the facts of this natural phenomena down because it sounds like it could be the plot of an exciting science fiction thriller. What is an interstellar comet? Much like a Christmas tree, planets in our Solar System revolve around our star, the sun. It’s not the only planetary system out there. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains other systems, and if you zoom out even further, there are even more. The comet 3I/ATLAS is labeled in…

Elusive street artist Banksy appeared to confirm Monday that a new mural in London, depicting two children lying down and pointing up at the sky, is his latest work. The artist posted two photos of the artwork on his official Instagram account Monday, hours after its appearance on a wall on the side of a building in Bayswater, west London sparked speculation over whether Banksy was behind it. The black and white mural, painted above a garage, depicts two figures dressed in winter hats and boots lying on the ground, with one of them pointing a finger upwards. An identical image appeared at the foot of a tower in central London on Monday, but the graffiti artist…

A Powerball ticket purchased at a gas station outside Little Rock, Arkansas, won a $1.817 billion jackpot in Wednesday’s Christmas Eve drawing, ending the lottery game’s three-month stretch without a top-prize winner. The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52 and 59, with the Powerball number being 19. The winning ticket was sold at a Murphy USA in Cabot, lottery officials in Arkansas said Thursday. No one answered the phone Thursday at the location, which was closed for Christmas. The community of roughly 27,000 people is 26 miles (42 kilometers) northeast of Little Rock. Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot higher than previous expected, making it the second-largest in…

In a record weird year for the economy, the price of silver is the latest thing to behave strangely. The price of the second fiddle precious metal has soared over the last month, hitting record highs and outpacing the growth of gold. After hovering between $15 and $25 an ounce for much of the last decade, the price of silver topped $40 an ounce this fall before spiking to a record high of $82 at the end of December. After topping $80 on Monday, silver fell back closer to $70 an ounce – still more than double what the metal was worth only a year ago. Precious metals like silver tend to do well in times of economic uncertainty and 2025 has fit that bill and then som…

A wild winter storm was expected to bring strong winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures to the Great Lakes and Northeast on Tuesday, a day after a bomb cyclone barreled across the northern U.S. and left tens thousands of customers without power. The storm that hit parts of the Plains and Great Lakes on Monday brought sharply colder air, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice and rain that led to treacherous travel. Forecasters said it intensified quickly enough to meet the criteria of a bomb cyclone, a system that strengthens rapidly as pressure drops. Nationwide, more than 153,000 customers were without power early Tuesday, more than a third of them in Michigan, accord…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. CEOs deal with many challenges, but apparently their overall health and fitness isn’t among them. Some 93% of CEOs surveyed by corporate wellness platform Wellhub rate their overall well-being as excellent or good. In contrast, the same study, released earlier this year, finds that only…

The holiday season always reminds me that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My kids start winter break thrilled—new toys to play with, days at home, permission to veg out. But by the time the new year rolls around, they’re itching to go back to school, eager to show off their favorite holiday gifts and dive back into their routine. It got me thinking: why don’t we, as adults, approach returning to work after a vacation with that same positive energy? More often than not, coming back from time off stirs up feelings of anxiety. For some, it reaches the point of canceling out any lingering benefits of the break. Others overcompensate by overworking u…

In a recent interview with Wired, billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates made clear she is no friend of hustle culture and nonstop busyness. “My parents were countercultural. They actually taught us that you needed breaks,” she says. “We took Sundays off as a family, and guess what else? My parents actually taught me the importance of rest, of taking a short nap every day.” Building quiet, restful moments into your day doesn’t just help you think more clearly and feel better physically, she continues. It also helps you check in with yourself and your values. It is important to “know who you are as a person and to live in that direction and in that lane,…

2025 unleashed the enormous potential of AI. According to Pew Research, 62% of adults say they interact with AI at least several times a week, and 73% of U.S. adults say they are at least a little bit willing to let AI assist with their day-to-day activities. However, while most people today use AI primarily for answering their questions or researching products to buy, the real opportunity isn’t in better search functionality alone. In the consumer tech industry, we are at the threshold of a generational opportunity to leverage AI to make people’s lives better and more meaningful, saving them time on what they need to do so they can focus on doing what they want to do…

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet, or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated, Real ID-compliant driver’s license, or other approved form of ID, in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID, or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be …

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated Real ID-compliant driver’s license or another approved form of ID in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be cha…

It’s more obvious than ever why recording encounters with federal agents matters: without bystander videos, it would be much harder to disprove the government’s Orwellian lies about how Alex Pretti was killed last Saturday. But there are also risks when you pull out your phone to take a video at a protest or if you see an ICE agent abducting, say, a 5-year-old child. Here’s what to know about how to protect your technology and yourself. The First Amendment gives you a right to record “It’s really important to start with the fact that individuals have a First Amendment right to record police officers and law enforcement,” says Maria Villegas Bravo, counsel at t…

For two decades, I’ve mentored professionals at every career stage: first as a high school teacher and administrator, and presently as a university professor and corporate consultant. One pattern emerges across every career pathway—the people who find strong fits for their talents aren’t the ones with the most impressive single credential. They’re the ones who understand how three things work together: Skills. Credentials. Network. The car mechanic who realized his hands-on skills weren’t enough as cars went digital. So he went to night school and earned his associate’s, bachelor’s, and MBA in four years. During the journey, he took advantage of every professional net…

Don’t tune into the Super Bowl hoping for a break from the tumultuous politics gripping the U.S. The NFL is facing pressure ahead of Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots to take a more explicit stance against the The President administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. More than 184,000 people have signed a petition calling on the league to denounce the potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Super Bowl, which is being held at Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area. The liberal group MoveOn plans to deliver the petition to the NFL’s New York City headquarters on Tuesday. Meanwhile, anticipation …

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They’re not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they’re not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code. These are electronic shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some stores are now using to display product prices. Unlike their paper predecessors, the prices aren’t printed in ink but rendered in pixels, and they can change insta…