Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

For publishers, one of the observations that’s often cited about AI search is that the people who click through are more intentional than those who come from traditional search. In other words, sure, AI might be nuking your referral traffic, but at least the people coming from there are more likely to engage, and potentially become loyal readers. And that’s true—the stats show it. But it’s an oversimplification of a more interesting reality. It turns out that the audience in AI search isn’t just a blob of traffic that you need to work extra hard to get the attention of. People who ask AI portals for information about something can have wildly different intentions…

Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket have roared into the public consciousness, drawing scrutiny from regulators and politicians. They’ve also captured the imagination of social media users, some of whom post outlandish claims of striking it rich by pointing AI models at prediction markets and making bank. But a new study published in the Cornell University archive arXiv suggests it’s not as easy as that. Researchers at Arcada Labs, through its Prediction Arena benchmark, tested six frontier AI models by giving each $10,000 to trade on prediction markets over 57 days earlier this year, tracking how they handled real-time information and decision-making on pla…

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Last weekend, I stopped by a gadget kiosk at my local mall—but not to buy a phone case or get a cracked screen replaced. Instead, I was there to get my irises and face scanned by a device called the Orb so I could receive a credential known as a World ID. Its purpose: to provide verifiable proof I’m a human being. Like everyone on the internet, I have grudgingly accepted the need to complete CAPTCHA tests, a truly irritating form of personhood verification that has been with us for almost 30 years. But until fairly recently, it hadn’t dawned on me that more conclusive evidence might be necessary. It did, howeve…

Below, Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl share five key insights from their new book, Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving. Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as the founder and director of its Center for Healthy Minds. He also founded a nonprofit, Humin, which translates science into tools that cultivate and measure well-being. Dahl serves as a contemplative scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds and as chief contemplative officer at the center’s affiliated nonprofit, Humin. What’s the big idea? Feeling ha…

Managing people is about helping people tap into underutilized reserves and overlooked skills that are indigenous to them, not fixing their habits. The people you manage naturally look to you for answers. They might even ask you to tell them what to do, which creates two major problems: If you tell them what to do, and even if you’re right, they won’t learn anything. If you give clear instructions regarding what to do and things still go wrong, they more than likely will blame you for the resulting mess. This kind of dynamic quietly creates an unhealthy dependency where the employee begins to look to you not just for guidance, but for approval. Anyone who…

The wearable breast pump space has never been more crowded. In the last three years alone, dozens of new devices have hit the market, each one positioned as more feature-packed than the last. Night lights. Stronger and stronger suction. Electric charging cases. Massagers and heat, placed with all the anatomical confidence of someone who has never needed to use one during late-night feeding hours, no less examined a woman’s anatomy or the clinical research on breast milk production. Feature innovation is important for a pitch deck you’re putting in front of investors. But from the inside of a nursing room – whether that’s at home, at the park, or in your employer’s pum…

When Meryl Rosenthal and her cofounder started a human capital and workplace transformation consultancy in 2005, she was 41 years old. Nine years later, her cofounder left for personal reasons, rendering Rosenthal—by then age 50—a so-called solopreneur. Being a woman of that age and running a business on her own certainly came with challenges. One, she says, was that younger HR and business leaders tended to assume she didn’t have the necessary expertise because her background had not squarely been in HR. Another was a preconception that she—as an older woman—didn’t understand technology as well as her younger peers. None of these things daunted Rosenthal, though…

I have a confession to make. I keep a secret document in my Google Drive titled “Fund Theses That Piss Me Off.” And every time I read about a venture capital fund with a generic, meaningless, or buzzwordy thesis that manages to raise a bunch of money regardless, I copy and paste it into my burn pile. This is how I started to notice a couple of years back how sometimes VCs will make dramatic changes to their thesis and investing focus. And it happens not just at a fund level, but across whole chunks of the industry, too. Take, for instance, climate VC. This was a white-hot category not too long ago. Today, all of a sudden, all the climate funds are gone, or they’v…

In the fast-paced world of consumer packaged goods (CPG), innovation has become one of the most overused—and misunderstood—terms in our vocabulary. Walking the halls of Expo West this year, the sheer scale of innovation on display is staggering. Every aisle promises a new solution to our food system’s woes—higher protein, added fiber, or the latest superfood infusion. Yet a troubling question persists: How much of this is actual food innovation, and how much is marketing dressed up as engineering? The modern CPG landscape excels at generating hype but often fails to create lasting value. Brands appear overnight, fueled by venture capital and massive marketing spends, …

In a social media landscape dominated by obnoxious ads, algorithms, and AI, Letterboxd has stood firm as a cult favorite. The app, which acts as a digital diary for users to log and leave reviews of any movie they watch, has been described by a Letterboxd spokesperson as “less a social media platform, more a community.” It’s resisted adding the infinite scroll feature that now seems omnipresent online, instead letting users curate their own feeds of friends and popular reviewers. But news that a controlling stake in Letterboxd could be going up for sale has users worried that their online safe haven could go the way of other resold apps like X. Canadian holdin…

In October 2024, I wrote that the tech industry was entering an era of silent firing. Jobs were not being eliminated overnight, but subtly reshaped in ways that encouraged attrition, as companies quietly prepared for large-scale automation. At the time, this was largely a warning. With age, it looks more like a pattern. Amazon’s January 2026 announcement of 16,000 layoffs brings corporate staff reductions to roughly 10% of its workforce. Publicly, leadership has been careful to separate these cuts from artificial intelligence. As CEO Andy Jassy put it after earlier reductions, “the announcement that we made…was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really A…

Starting today, you can use Spotify to knock out a 10-minute Pilates session, a weighted glutes circuit, or a bit of morning yoga. The music platform just announced its first foray into the fitness world (not counting the 150 million user-generated playlists on the app, of course). Under the new “Fitness” section, all users will be able to access a library of content, including follow-along videos, from popular fitness creators like Chloe Ting and Yoga with Kassandra. The new feature also includes a partnership with Peloton, which makes a catalog of more than 1,400 ad-free Peloton classes available to Spotify’s Premium subscribers. Whether you’re a runner, weight…

Many resources exist about how to perform well in a formal job interview, but what’s talked about less is how to manage an informal conversation about a job opportunity where the format and success criteria are more ambiguous. The conversation is typically held away from the office over coffee, or even drinks and the ‘interviewer’ may not be taking any notes. These informal discussions most commonly occur at the start and end of a process. However, as headhunter Basil Leroux told me ‘nothing is ever really informal, as opinions and judgements are always being formed.’ In my work as an Executive Career Coach, I often see leaders fail to maximize an ‘informal chat’ as p…

In this political climate, corporate sustainability initiatives are not always a popular topic of conversation. But even though they are less visible, with companies greenhushing, sustainability commitments and actions are continuing—and in some cases growing. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members how their approaches to sustainability have changed in the last year. Six leaders shared positive changes and thoughtful tactics their companies were taking. Some efforts are internal, some are external. But all are intentional. 1. B CORP CERTIFICATION We achieved B Corp certification last year for our Philadelphia location, which was a culmination of 15 months…

A recent Washington Post investigation described something called “degree hacking” — students racing through accredited online bachelor’s and master’s programs in weeks rather than years. One woman earned both degrees in 2024 for a combined cost of just over $4,000. Another completed 16 college courses in 22 days. A cottage industry of YouTube coaches and $1,500 consulting packages has sprung up to help people game the system. Academic officials are alarmed. Accreditors are saying they may investigate. Reddit moderators at one university forum have had to create a separate subforum to contain the conflict between regular students and speed-runners. I am not alarme…

Ask any C-suite leader if AI is a priority in their organization. The answer is yes. The numbers back it up. Menlo Ventures reports that companies spent $37 billion in 2025 on AI. But spending does not guarantee success, and many companies are now coming out of major rollouts with little to show for it. Adoption is low, productivity hasn’t increased, and ROI is still an idea on a slide because organizations handed AI to their IT team like it was new software to install and called it a rollout. Deploying AI is a workforce strategy that demands behavior change and a new operating model. It’s not a technology rollout. It’s a workforce and culture transformation. …

It’s understandable that following the announcement that John Ternus will succeed Tim Cook as Apple CEO, people will pore over his résumé for signs of how the company might change. Cook was famously an operations and logistics wizard, handpicked by Steve Jobs to manage Apple with his trademark efficiency. But his successor is more of a mystery. Ternus has been a senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple for five years, and a VP since 2013, but beyond that he hasn’t been credited with steering the company in a particular direction. All anyone can really say for now is that Apple will be led by someone who is strongly experienced in hardware, which sounds …

50% of the global population is ageist against older people, according to the World Health Organization. As the Managing Director of a recruitment company, I know this is true. Spend enough time listening in on hiring conversations, and a curious pattern emerges. When companies talk of innovation, adaptability, and fresh thinking, they often imagine a young, agile, fast-moving team with the latest technologies at their fingertips. So, we see hiring decisions that favor younger or mid-career employees, under the assumption that younger employees are naturally more creative, more technologically fluent, or better suited to fast-moving industries. There’s also the idea …

It’s hard enough to publish a book, but getting people to buy it is an entirely different battle. As new platforms reshape how readers gather and interact online, authors are finding that sometimes platforms built to showcase writing can also double as powerful engines for discovery. The most high-profile example so far might be Girls creator Lena Dunham, who bolstered the traditional press tour for her new memoir Famesick with interviews and features on the newsletter platform Substack. In an interview with Arielle Swedback for her On Substack newsletter (which is published, of course, on Substack), Dunham made the case in blunt terms: “Someone I trust told me t…

Working mothers are sleep-deprived. While parenting and sleep deprivation go hand in hand, at work, moms are expected to be on their A-game. However, a new report is shedding light on how too little sleep is impacting how moms are able to show up at work, or even, if they’re able to show up at all. According to the new Bedtime Report from Better Sleep, a relaxation and sleep app with over 65 million users worldwide, moms are struggling to get enough rest. The research, which was conducted by Wakefield Research and involved 1,000 U.S. mothers, found that over the past year more than half of working moms (53%) have either called in sick, left work early, or underperfor…

If you’re like me, your bank statement looks like a graveyard of monthly $9.99 charges for apps and web services that somehow add up to the price of a used Honda Civic every year. Somewhere over the last decade or two, software companies turned us from owners into renters. And quite frankly, the landlords are getting greedy. But here’s the good news: Whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, there are world-class alternatives that don’t require a monthly tribute to a corporate overlord. We’re talking professional-grade tools that are either free forever or have free tiers so robust you’ll forget the paid version even exists. Stop renting your digital life. Here are…