Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

My friend turned to me the other day with a sly smirk and whispered, “Are you also part of Group 7?” I shook my head, unsure of what she meant—feeling left out of whatever secret club she was referring to. It didn’t take long for the algorithm to catch up with me. Within a few hours, my For You Page on TikTok was flooded, and before I knew it, I, too, was officially part of the internet’s newest inside joke. “Group 7” began as a simple experiment by musician Sophia James, who wanted to promote her new song So Unfair—and experiment with the quirky nature of TikTok’s algorithm. TikTok’s For You Page, or FYP, described by the Guardian as “uncannily good at predi…

Melinda French Gates has been very busy since her divorce and subsequent departure from the Gates Foundation. For example, she launched her own venture, with $12.5 billion to put toward advancing causes she cares about, specifically those related to women and families. She has even gotten involved in politics, endorsing a candidate for the first time ever. French Gates isn’t new to leading an organization, or to leading people. She has spent the past few decades leaving her imprint on what is arguably the most influential charitable organization in the world. Still, I imagine it can all get a little overwhelming at times. The key to managing it all isn’t to work const…

Stocks are drifting near their record heights on Wall Street Wednesday, while the price of gold falls again to trim more off its tremendous gain for the year. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading and is sitting just underneath its all-time high, which was set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 65 points, or 0.1%, coming off its own record. The Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time. Bank stocks were holding relatively steady after Capital One Financial, Western Alliance Bancorp and others reported stronger profits for the summer than analysts expected. The report from Western Alliance was particularly welcome af…

It looks like I’m walking on Nerf darts. Twenty-two foam nubs protrude from the bottom of this shoe. When I slide it on, it almost feels like I’m walking on bubble tape—or like, with every step, an octopus tentacle is suctioning to my foot. Even through a thick cotton sock and all that foam, I can feel textures underfoot. I sense the individual blades of grass on a soccer pitch, and dragging my sole along a textured running track feels a bit akin to licking the roof of my mouth. Am I calmer? Perhaps. I’m certainly more mindful. But I also wonder if I’d notice this sensation in an hour. This is Nike Mind—the company’s first foray into apparel that puts your…

Today many people wish to break away from their corporate jobs and become entrepreneurs. And apparently they find satisfaction in doing so, because 96% of people who are self-employed have no desire to go back to a “regular job.” View the full article

Below, co-authors Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei share five key insights from their new book, Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making. Barry spent 45 years teaching psychology at Swarthmore College. Now he holds a visiting position at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. Richard held a similarly long tenure at Swarthmore College, 42 years, as a philosophy professor. What’s the big idea? There is no such thing as a calculator for life’s decisions. Try as we might to quantify, count, and calculate in search of the “right” choice, that is simply not how wise decision-making happens. Qualitative judgme…

Amazon is well aware that you’re spending hours agonizing over the reviews for seven different near-identical toaster ovens before you actually make a decision. Now, it has an AI feature for that—and we have to admit, it’s pretty helpful. “Help me decide” is a new AI shopping function that rolled out on October 23 across millions of U.S. customers on the Amazon shopping app and mobile browser. It uses large language models and AI tools from Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) suite of offerings to analyze your shopping history, purchase details, and preferences, and then match those insights with product details and customer reviews to recommend products that you might be most…

Rare earth stocks find themselves underground on Monday as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he expects that China and the U.S. will work out a trade deal in the near future. Meanwhile, stock markets largely soared on news of the trade optimism, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up roughly 0.5%, the S&P 500 up 1%, and the Nasdaq up 1.6% as of midday Monday. Bessent, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday news program, said that he anticipates that China will resume soybean purchases from the U.S., and that there could be an announcement on Thursday when President The President and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in South Korea. “I’m not going…

In January 2025, subway riders at the 59th Street-Lexington Avenue station in Manhattan noticed a surprising new addition: spiked metal partitions between each fare gate. Some commuters called the partitions “silly and foolish.” Others said they were “a waste of money.” Over the past nine months, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has rolled out the same spiked partitions to 183 stations across the subway network, with more on the way. Like spikes on a handrail prevent people from sitting on it, these metal screens (which the MTA calls “sleeves”) are designed to prevent people from hoisting themselves over the turnstiles. They’ve also turned what was already an…

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is ready to spill the tea in a new newsletter. Called The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, the revamped newsletter for the popular morning show on the network that will soon be called MS NOW (the name change is official on November 15, the network says) took its inspiration from the world of print magazines. It’s designed to be part of a larger flywheel to grow and connect with the show’s audience. “We wanted something that was visually arresting, that was simple, elegant, and that people could read and get insight from,” Scarborough tells Fast Company. The newsletter will be sent in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, …

I once attended a slide presentation given by an executive in a telcom company. The presentation was highly technical, but that was not the main problem. It was boring because the speaker was using back-to-back visuals and had zero connection to his audience. When the one-hour session came to an end, the entire audience filed out of the room but the executive kept talking. He was so focused on his visuals that he didn’t even realize the audience had left the room. This story illustrates the dangers of using slides. The speaker can easily lose touch with the audience, and the result is that the power you bring as a speaker gets lost. To retain your power when using…

There are bigger, better-known tech brands than Logitech, but few have ever rivaled its quiet but pervasive impact on how people engage with the digital world. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, but with equally deep roots in Silicon Valley, the 44-year-old company helped to popularize once-unfamiliar devices such as computer mice and webcams. Those are still two of its marquee product lines. But Logitech also makes a dizzying array of other accoutrements for personal and business computing, including keyboards, headphones, speakers, microphones, videoconferencing equipment, tablet accessories, gaming controllers, and more. Despite playing in a variety of categor…

Rumor has it that Palantir Technologies is poised for a stock split. An analyst for RBC Capital Markets recently polled investors, who reportedly indicated a desire for the software company to make such a move. “Retail investors are also largely focused on the potential for a stock split, and although this topic decreased quarter over quarter, it remains the most relevant topic,” analyst Rishi Jaluria stated, according to Investor’s Business Daily. He continued: “With Palantir’s $6 billion cash balance, we think retail investors may be starting to become frustrated by the company’s lack of willingness to return capital to shareholders given no apparent intere…

Below, Paul Leonardi shares five key insights from his new book, Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life. Paul is a professor of technology management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a frequent consultant and speaker to a wide range of companies, such as Google, Microsoft, YouTube, McKinsey, GM, and Fidelity. He is also a contributor to the Harvard Business Review. What’s the big idea? We are the first generation in human history to carry the entire world’s information, connections, and distractions in our pockets. It’s no wonder that the technology once promised to make life easier now leaves us tired and overwhelmed. Pa…

Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shutt…

In the C-suite, relationships can make or break your effectiveness, and too often, we’ve been taught that you must choose to be either a friend or a colleague, but never both. The fear is understandable. Too much closeness, and you risk favoritism. Too much distance erodes trust, but our research and experience as leadership advisers point to a different reality: genuine, trust-based relationships are not a liability; they’re a leadership advantage. The real risk isn’t choosing one or the other; it’s failing to integrate both. Morag’s Ally Mindset Profile data reveals a telling truth: 67% of respondents say their success has been undermined by their peer relationships…

For decades now, tech companies have been promising us a future straight out of Star Trek. Instead of being confined to phones and computers, our digital lives would extend to a network of screens all around us, from connected TVs and smart fridges to kitchen countertop displays and car dashboards. The tech companies called this “ambient computing” or “ubiquitous computing” and extolled how it would get technology out of the way so we could focus on the real world. Here’s what we’ve got instead: Samsung’s smart refrigerators, which range from $1,899 to $3,499, have started showing advertisements on their screens. Amazon’s Echo Show smart displays now have …

It’s 10 a.m. on an October morning, and I’m in the middle of a one-on-one Zoom interview when a sudden trilling sounds from behind me. I try to ignore it, but several other strange noises follow. My eyes glaze over as I commit myself to feigning complete obliviousness to my sonic surroundings. It’s easier than explaining that the noises are coming from my AI-powered pet. This awkward encounter came thanks to Moflin, a $429 AI pet built by the electronics company Casio. According to Casio’s official description, the Moflin is “a smart companion powered by AI, with emotions like a living creature.” This robot friend looks a bit like a Star Trek tribble, in that it’s an …

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. Glenn Fogel joined dot-com darling Priceline in early 2000, a year after the “name your price” travel site’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). “I joined one week before the Nasdaq peaked,” Fogel recalls. Within a year of his arrival, the stock had cratered to $6 a share. By March 2…

When Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, his AI-generated encyclopedia intended to rival Wikipedia, it was not just another experiment in artificial intelligence. It was a case study in everything that can go wrong when technological power, ideological bias, and unaccountable automation converge in the same hands. Grokipedia copies vast sections of Wikipedia almost verbatim, while rewriting and “reinterpreting” others to reflect Musk’s personal worldview. It could genuinely be conceived as the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedia’s edits aggressively editorialize topics ranging from climate change, to immigration, to (of course…

Saudi oil giant Aramco reported Tuesday a $26.9 billion profit in the third quarter, down slightly from last year as global energy prices remain depressed over concerns of too much oil being on the market. Aramco’s results serve as a bellwether for the wider oil industry, which is still digesting the OPEC+ decision this weekend to halt planned production increases in the first quarter of next year over supply worries. Benchmark Brent crude, at just under $65 a barrel, has been fluttering near a four-year low. In filing on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange, Aramco, formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., reported overall revenue of $111 billion in the third quarter, c…