Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In the short time since Graza’s 2022 launch, the wunderkind olive oil slinger has become a standout in a crowded market with its dynamic duo of extra-virgin olive oils: Sizzle for cooking and Drizzle for finishing—cleverly packaged in matte-green squeeze bottles. On Tuesday, Graza introduced its third product to the lineup, the high-heat cooking oil Frizzle. It’s being sold online as well as in select Whole Foods locations nationwide in squeeze bottles and a company-first nonaerosol spray bottle. Made from the remaining pressed olives from Graza’s flagship oils, Frizzle is extracted and refined without the use of chemicals or solvents. The natural refinement proc…

The fate of Google’s vast empire is now in the hands of a federal judge in Washington, D.C., as hearings begin to determine whether the tech giant should be broken up for maintaining an illegal monopoly in search. If the court rules against Google, the outcome could send shockwaves through the tech industry. The company might be forced to divest major assets—potentially including its Chrome browser or even the Android operating system. While the government has taken similar antitrust actions in the past, it’s been more than 25 years since a household name faced a breakup of this scale. So, what happened to the companies that were split up—or nearly split up—under …

The world’s leading minds in AI are gathering in Paris for the AI Action Summit, which kicked off on Monday. French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting the summit, which includes Vice President JD Vance among its attendees. But the summit—which is focused on discussion and debate about the future of the technology—comes at a time when things are moving quickly in the AI space. While France’s minister for AI and digital affairs, Clara Chappaz, may want to keep the debate focused on three key objectives for the summit, covering societal and cultural, economic, and diplomatic needs, there’s much more going on at the minute. Between Project Stargate, the U.S.’s $500 …

How brands reach consumers is always evolving. And at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW this past weekend, executives from Duolingo, NBCUniversal, and Creators Corp. discussed how they’re not only holding their consumers’s attention, but finding ways to embed their brands into their daily lives, primarily through branded entertainment. NBCUniversal: Find Ways to Engage Fans within an Experience When John Jelley, SVP of product and user experience at Peacock and global streaming for NBCUniversal, thinks about branded entertainment, he thinks about fandoms. From Love Island to The Traitors to Saturday Night Live, NBCUniversal has a wide array of IP with deep fandoms Jelley…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for exam…

How are the world’s most creative people using AI to drive their work forward? This was the question at the heart of an in-depth survey Fast Company recently conducted in partnership with Whalar, a leading social agency focused on content creators. We found that, for most, AI has become a routine part of the creative process—and a return to an AI-free working life has become almost unfathomable. Yet the survey also found the world’s creative elite are grappling with a technology that gets more powerful and useful every day but remains unwieldy, error-prone, and not entirely trustworthy. “I want people to understand how well it can augment and enhance the thinking proce…

Small changes in routines can create significant improvements in how much gets accomplished in a day. Here, experts share 15 practical habits that can boost productivity and lead to better results in your work and personal life. Plan Your Week Every Friday Afternoon One small habit that’s made the biggest long-term difference in my productivity is making a plan every Friday for the coming week. Most people start their Mondays feeling behind before they’ve even begun. Their inbox dictates their day, and they spend valuable energy reacting instead of leading. I used to do the same thing—until I started ending each week with a simple Friday planning ritual. Before I wrap …

Leading a team has never been simple, but today’s challenges demand something extra. With deep divisions in America spilling over into our workplaces, simply carrying on “business as usual” won’t cut it. Employees are craving authenticity, transparency, and leaders who genuinely care. So, how can you step up, even when the path forward seems uncertain? Through conversations with leaders at Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups, we discovered three actions that can help you navigate this moment with courage and empathy. Cultivate trust through transparency & curiosity In an era marked by mass layoffs, arbitrary return-to-office mandates, and eroding faith in institu…

When you walk outside, you might be concerned about how a nearby idling car or a faraway factory are polluting the air you breathe. But when you’re inside, the products you use to make your home smell good—like wax melts, air fresheners, or diffusers—warrant the same worries. These products create nanoparticles that pollute your indoor air, at times even making the air inside your home more polluted than the urban outdoors. Researchers at Purdue University have been studying how everyday products create air pollution inside our homes. In a lab that resembles a tiny house—called the Purdue zero Energy Design Guidance for Engineers (zEDGE) lab—they study the emissions t…

During Milan Design Week—which encompasses Salone del Mobile, a furniture fair now in its 63rd edition, and Fuorisalone, the exhibitions held off-site—the Lombardian city transforms into a spritz-fueled celebration of all things design. Historic villas open their doors to become showrooms for new products and furniture, interior designers and architects flex their creativity in site-specific installations, and emerging practitioners debut work to an international audience that is eager to discover fresh, exciting ideas. And let’s not forget the brands. Milan Design Week has transformed from an interiors-focused event into a significant platform for fashion, automotive…

Over the past 20 years, the Walt Disney Company has spent billions acquiring the world’s most recognizable intellectual properties, including Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar. It’s not just putting those assets to use on the big screen. Increasingly, those properties are an ever-larger part of the company’s theme parks, including Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida. Last August, Disney announced an expansion of its parks, and now, at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin this month, Disney has provided more details about new experiences and rides coming to those parks—and yep, the upcoming theme park experiences are all about Marvel, Sta…

In January, Meta announced the end of third-party fact checkers on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The tech giant is betting on a new, community-driven system called Community Notes that draws on X’s feature of the same name and uses the X’s open algorithm as its basis. Meta is rolling out the feature today. Anyone who wants to write and rate community notes can sign up now. The rollout will be throttled and, initially, notes won’t appear publicly as Meta claims it needs time to feed the algorithm and ensure this system is working properly. The promise is enticing. A more scalable, less biased way to flag false or misleading content, driven by the wisdom of the crowd r…

If you’ve been noticing that cobalt-hued water bottles have started to pop up everywhere you’re not alone. The water has recently made an appearance on shelves at major retailers including Whole Foods and 7-Eleven, starred in viral social media videos created by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, adorned on tables at the Golden Globes, and beginning this week, will star in a fresh new advertising campaign featuring WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins. All of these marketing efforts represent a more expansive pitch by Saratoga Spring Water that the brand’s premium-priced water isn’t just for fine dining– which has been the brand’s core focus for the past several years — it’s …

Some 10,000 grocery store workers across the greater Denver area went on strike Thursday, claiming unfair and illegal negotiating practices by King Soopers while their union has been negotiating a new contract with the store chain. Striking workers at 77 King Soopers stores in Denver and its suburbs, plus those in nearby Boulder and Louisville, Colorado, urged customers not to cross picket lines that began taking shape before dawn. “Stand together. Stay strong,” United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 President Kim Cordova wrote union members in a Monday letter announcing the strike. UFCW Local 7 members voted by 96% last week to authori…

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. Doom-and-gloom narratives about artificial intelligence going rogue to the detriment of humans are a staple of popular culture. For some people, just say “AI,” and visions of Skynet from the Terminator movies taking over the world will instantly pop into their heads. Skepticism about AI isn’t just in the realm of science fiction, of course. As AI becomes more mainstream, legitimate concerns about i…

The trope of the starving, broke artist has long maintained a place in the public imagination, even as it has morphed into idealized notions of “‘hustle” or “grindset.” “It’s cool to romanticize [that lifestyle] for a little bit and use it as part of your motivation,” says L.A.-based rising musician Gidi, “but at a certain point we gotta be able to see the fruits of our labor.” For many artists and songwriters, the fruits are there in the form of royalties—they’re just exceedingly difficult to harvest. In the labyrinthine world of the music industry, royalty collection is particularly complex. There are hundreds of music streaming platforms operating in hundreds of coun…

Technology workers in Kenya have held a vigil for a colleague who died in unclear circumstances after she was unable to travel to her home in Nigeria for two years. Ladi Anzaki Olubunmi, a content moderator for TikTok employed by the subcontractor Teleperformance Kenya, died last week and her decomposing body was discovered in her house after three days. It was unclear what caused her death, but colleagues say she had complained of fatigue and was “desperate to go back home.” Teleperformance Kenya told the Associated Press on Wednesday that they didn’t deny Olubunmi her leave to go home. Her family in Nigeria says she only traveled once since coming to Kenya t…

Remember when TikTok went nuts for “Dubai chocolate”? Well, that fervor is now causing an international shortage of pistachios. The trend took off in 2023 when food reviewer Maria Vehera posted a video unwrapping and eating the high-end chocolate bar. The chocolate (called “Can’t Get Knafeh of It” in a nod to the traditional Arab dessert) was originally launched in 2021 by boutique Emirati chocolatier FIX. Vehera’s video has since racked up over 124 million views and is widely credited with sparking the “Dubai chocolate” craze. Instantly recognisable by its vibrant green filling, TikTokers flooded the platform with enthusiastic taste tests of the bar, which is sol…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on market—to generate a score showing whether a housing market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow, a score of 70 or above means it’s a “strong sellers mark…

Over the past several years, the art of the rebrand has increasingly become a spectacle sport. From cultural institutions like the Philadelphia Art Museum, which reportedly fired its CEO over a poorly received rebrand this year, to the furniture brand La-Z-Boy, which was widely praised for its modern revamp, the internet’s attention economy has meant that almost no notable rebrand is safe from social media’s deluge of hot takes. In 2025, that was more true than ever. Brands that rolled out a new look this year were scrutinized for everything from their font and color choices to the potential ideological implications of their visual pivots. In September, after the desi…

There’s a focus on protecting our personal data now, perhaps more so than ever before, be it from foreign powers, Big Tech, or Elon Musk’s DOGE. Consumers are wary about where their data is going, what it’s being used for, and how, or if, they can put up safeguards, especially while using tech tools like search engines or AI assistants. With several AI tools and assistants hitting the market over the past couple of years—Microsoft’s Copilot and Meta’s Llama, among many others—much of our data, queries, and summaries are being fed to large tech companies, used to train their artificial intelligence models. While some users may not mind, it could turn others off, w…

If you’re having a farewell party for a beloved colleague, don’t cry too hard into your cake. There’s a decent chance they’ll be back. According to a Harvard Business Review study, 28% of “new hires” were “boomerang hires,” the term for someone who’d resigned within the last three years only to return. Mindi Cox, chief people officer for O.C. Tanner, provider of employee recognition and reward solutions, falls into the boomerang employee category herself. As a hiring manager, she’s also done her fair share of hiring former employees, too. “People often leave a job because there’s an opportunity that’s too good to turn down, or they have a life season, like I had, and ne…

Noticed all the blondes going back to their natural hair color lately? As much as many try to claim it’s because of a “hair health journey,” other factors seem to be at play here. “How’s the economy?” one TikTok user asks in a viral video. “Well, hasn’t been good for a while seems like my indicators tell me,” the former blonde says, measuring the inches of her incoming roots with her fingers. “THIS IS SO ACCURATE,” one commenter responded. I’m no expert, but root length has always been a pretty solid way to tell how people are doing financially. “Remember when balayage became really popular in 2009?” asked one person in the comments. During the 2007-t…