Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

With gas prices hovering around $4.51 a gallon, there’s little relief for drivers heading into the busy Memorial Day weekend, the official kickoff to summer travel. Or, is there? While it might seem like an unlikely panacea, Cracker Barrel could bring some unexpected solace. Here’s what to know. What’s happening? On Tuesday, Cracker Barrel launches a 10-week nationwide “Fuel Your Summer Road Trip” giveaway of $250,000 in free gas—and food—to Cracker Barrel Rewards members during this summer’s peak road trip season. The deal lasts through July 26. A total of 250 Cracker Barrel Rewards members will each receive $1,000—a $500 gas gift card and a $500 food gift…

The Onion is developing a documentary for America’s 250th anniversary, called Birth of a Nation, a project CEO Ben Collins says reflects the company’s growing focus beyond satire articles and headlines. “For the 250th anniversary of America, we’re making a documentary called ‘Birth of a Nation,’ which is great,” Collins said onstage at the Fast Company Most Innovative Companies Summit, in a conversation with Jill Bernstein. The documentary is one of several projects underway at The Onion, following its acquisition by Collins and a group of investors in 2024. Before buying the publication, Collins spent years at NBC News covering extremism and misinformation on…

It’s graduation week, which means the emissaries of the nation’s elite are now descending onto college campuses to deliver the much-discussed and, they hope, indelibly quotable college commencement address. These speeches are their own sort of literary genre. The celebrities, politicians, and titans of industry invited to give these keynotes must seem intelligent enough, but not bore—or worse, antagonize—their audience. Typically, this involves a speaker integrating a clever life story, select nuggets of eternal wisdom, a few trite asides to campus lore, and well-placed references to current affairs into one propulsive and affecting speech. The problem this year, how…

We need to have a blunt conversation about the word empowerment. In the majority of companies, the lie behind the word “empowerment” becomes apparent in familiar ways: job descriptions that promise autonomy, leaders who proudly talk about their empowered teams, and meetings that end with “you’ve got this.” Reality though strips away the veneer of this lie: that same work still runs through a gauntlet of approvals, sign-offs, and second-guessing. The language suggests freedom. The system reinforces control. The result is not empowerment. It is dependence with better branding. In our work at Amazon helping Fortune 500 leaders understand how to dismantle their r…

AI is everywhere these days. Try as you might to avoid it, you’re not likely to succeed. LinkedIn, though, is attempting to draw a line in the sand and, if not completely eliminate the AI slop on its pages, at least cut back on it. The company plans to target low-quality AI posts that distract its users from finding value on the platform. That has been a growing problem in recent months as people have trawled LinkedIn for engagement among professional users. The company’s VP of product, Laura Lorenzetti, says LinkedIn isn’t banning all posts generated by artificial intelligence. Some, she concedes, actually have some value. Others, though? Those need to go. …

Management and union leaders at Samsung Electronics failed to reach a last-minute deal over wages Wednesday, raising prospects for a strike at the South Korean electronics giant that could rattle global semiconductor supplies and the country’s trade-dependent economy. Government officials have threatened to invoke rarely used emergency powers to force a settlement at Samsung, where the union, which represents more than 70,000 workers, says the company has failed to offer adequate compensation despite its soaring profits fueled by the global boom in artificial intelligence. After the latest round of talks ended without a breakthrough on Wednesday, union leader Choi Seung…

For the past two years, I’ve had a front-row seat to one of the largest and most rigorous datasets in global design. Each year, the iF DESIGN AWARD receives over 10,000 submissions spanning 93 categories of design. Participants include industry giants like Apple and Coca-Cola, to startups and independent design studios that are actively shaping the field’s future. Taken together, these entries offer more than a snapshot of excellence. They reveal where design is actually headed. What emerges from recent winners is a growing shift: In many categories, sustainability is no longer a differentiator, it’s the baseline for great design. The most compelling work today goes e…