Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

FIFA slashed the price of some World Cup tickets for teams’ most loyal fans following a global backlash and some will get $60 seats for the final instead of being asked to pay $4,185. FIFA said Tuesday that $60 tickets will be made available for every game at the tournament in North America, going to the national federations whose teams are playing. Those federations decide how to distribute them to loyal fans who have attended previous games at home and on the road. The number of $60 tickets for each game is likely to be in the hundreds, rather than thousands, in what FIFA is now calling a “Supporter Entry Tier” price category. FIFA did not specify exactly wh…

Kraft Heinz announced on Tuesday that new CEO Steve Cahillane will join the food giant to help steer its split into two companies. The former head of Kellanova joins the ailing food giant after years of declining sales and slow growth, and as shares are down 75% since 2017. In 2026, the company will split into two independent, publicly traded companies, Global Taste Elevation Co. and North American Grocery Co., with the first focused on condiments and the Heinz ketchup brand, and the second on Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles, and Lunchables brands. Cahillane comes on board January 1, 2026 and will serve as chief executive officer of the first of those companies, which …

Automakers Hyundai and Kia must offer free repairs to millions of models under a settlement announced Tuesday by Minnesota’s attorney general, who led an effort by dozens of states that argued the vehicles weren’t equipped with proper anti-theft technology, leaving them vulnerable to theft. Under the nationwide settlement, the companies will offer a free repair to all eligible vehicles at a cost that could top $500 million, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said. Hyundai and Kia must also outfit all future vehicles sold in the U.S. with a key piece of technology called an engine immobilizer and pay up to $4.5 million of restitution to people whose vehicles were…

Suzanna’s Kitchen, a Georgia-based food production company, has issued a recall of 62,550 pounds of fully cooked, bone-in breaded chicken products. The chicken, which was distributed nationwide, was recalled over mislabeling. While the product was labeled with a product code that classifies it as non-allergen-containing, the product contains soy. According to the recall notice, which was issued on December 12, the affected product is the eight-piece cut, bone-in breaded chicken portions that were produced on October 16, 2025. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mark of inspection and establishment number printed on the side of the package is “P-1380.” …

Robinhood is betting that its customers want to trade on absolutely everything. On Tuesday, the popular stock-trading app unveiled a slate of updates to its prediction markets business, aggressively expanding into sports. Now, Robinhood users can trade contracts tied to specific professional football players’ performances, as well as pre-packaged combos for individual games. Early next year, customers will be able to combine up to ten outcomes — such as winners, spreads, and totals — into a single, custom-built contract. Robinhood’s news site, Sherwood, is also launching a new sports newsletter, Scoreboard. Eventually, Robinhood plans to launch contracts that sp…

It’s rare that your esoteric, impossible-to-pronounce, decade-long research project becomes a technology so crucial to national security that the President of the United States calls it out from the White House. But that’s exactly what happened to Dr. Eric Wengrowski, the CEO of Steg AI. Wengrowski spent nearly a decade of his life advancing steganography, a deeply-technical method for tracking images as they travel through the machinery of the modern Internet, as the focus of his PHD at Rutgers University. After earning his degree, Wengrowki and a team of co-founders rolled his tech into a small startup. For several years, the company grew, but mostly toi…

Many Americans are likely to see massive changes to their taxes in 2026, especially seniors. That’s largely due to President Donald The President’s so-called big, beautiful bill, a massive 940-page bill signed into law over the summer that includes an array of new tax write-offs but also fails to renew some previous deductions from the Biden administration. One change is a $6,000 deduction for seniors. Here’s what to know. Who qualifies for the new senior tax deduction? The President’s tax and spending law introduced a $6,000 deduction for qualifying seniors ages 65 and older, on top of the current additional standard deduction for seniors under existing la…

Whenever I tell people I’m an auctioneer, there are inevitably two follow up questions: First: “Do you talk really fast like those guys on TV?” followed by a cartoonish imitation, complete with an imaginary microphone and a pseudo Southern accent. Second: “What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever sold?” After two decades of auctioneering, the answer is usually “something in the many millions.” I typically just name the last item I sold for over a million dollars. Whether someone pictures a fast talking cattle auction or a refined British gentleman selling Picassos in black tie, auctioneers are assumed to do one thing: talk. A lot. Which is why most peop…

Cloudflare has often been described as some version of “the most important internet company you’ve never heard of.” But for the better part of 2025, cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince has been trying to change that. The company’s core business is to improve the performance and enhance the security of websites and online applications, protecting against malicious actors and routing web traffic through its data centers to optimize performance. “Six billion people pass through our network every single month,” Prince says. If Cloudflare is doing its job well, no one notices. But in July, Prince declared “Content Independence Day,” a broadside against the AI companies th…

I am an introverted person who feels shy at events. Early in my career, I found conferences to be so overwhelming that I’d sometimes just hide in the bathroom, go into an anxious spiral of fear and guilt, and then try to convince myself to get out and talk to at least one person. Watching how other people seemed to enjoy these events and easily talk to everyone made me think something was wrong with me. The truth is that 36% of young people have anxiety. But knowing that didn’t make networking any easier. However, networking is an important skill, and connections help drive your career and bring new opportunities. Research shows that people who network often tend to h…

Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are “very” acceptable as holiday presents, but they’re much less likely to say that about a gift that was purchased secondhand or re-gifted, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. “Cash is OK for the grandkids I guess,” said Nancy Wyant, 73, in rural central Iowa. “But I’m a gift giver.” Come New Year’s Eve, she’ll be fast asleep before 2026 rolls around. “At our ag…

Last month, Believer Meats was basking in acclaim. The startup had just secured final U.S. government approval for what it billed as Earth’s largest cultivated-meat facility, a $125 million complex near Raleigh, North Carolina. Boosters hailed the plant’s role in strengthening U.S. competitiveness in the race to grow meat from cells—a sector long dominated by Israel. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) called it “a major economic win for the state and region.” Believer Meats CEO Gustavo Burger said he was thrilled about the facility’s opening, calling it a “major milestone” that would redefine the future of food. “Boom,” he wrote on LinkedIn, announcing that the company was s…

In a seismic shift for one of television’s marquee events, the Academy Awards will depart ABC and begin streaming on YouTube beginning in 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday. ABC will continue to broadcast the annual ceremony through 2028. That year will mark the 100th Oscars. But starting in 2029, YouTube will retain global rights to streaming the Oscars through 2033. YouTube will effectively be the home to all things Oscars, including red-carpet coverage, the Governors Awards, and the Oscar nominations announcement. “We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the…

Gen Z is never beating the “unemployable” allegations. For Gen Z, a growing confidence crisis means common workplace interactions are now a major source of anxiety. Working with unfamiliar colleagues, making small talk, using the phone, and waking up early were among the biggest anxieties for young workers, according to new research from Trinity College London.​ These fears have also been echoed online. “Can we talk about the fear of having to make a phone call in a dead silent office of cubicles,” one TikTok creator recently posted. “When you finally finish sending that email that’s been giving you anxiety and they respond with ‘are you free for a quick…

Concerns about an AI bubble and increased competition are weighing on Nvidia as the stock fell to a three-month low on Wednesday. Shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company tumbled more than 3% amid a broader decline for those chipmakers that are key to the artificial intelligence boom. Shares of Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom were also down 4% and 5%, respectively. In recent weeks, a slew of companies have made moves that could chip away at Nvidia’s domination as the go-to maker of chips for the AI industry. One such company, MetaX Integrated Circuits of China, debuted an initial public offering on Wednesday and surged nearly 700%. BEHIND NVIDI…

In the months following 2023’s Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strikes, film-industry workers adopted a refrain: “Survive ‘til ‘25” — a meager goal reflecting industry reality. The strikes came shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic ground production to a halt. The dream factory had become a nightmare. The pandemic-inflicted production pause bled workers’ savings, forcing many to seek income outside the industry. Once work restarted, those who wanted to return to work — grips, camera operators, writers, directors, administrative staff, the Teamsters who ferry cast and crew to film set…

When Apple launched the App Store in 2008, it was impossibly influential to the future of the internet. The all-powerful world wide web was sliced and diced into bite-sized apps oft-dubbed Web 2.0. What followed was not just software that fit in your pocket. From TikTok to Uber, these camera-wielding, GPS-integrated, cloud-connected platforms changed the way we lived. Now, in the wake of AI, the app store is arising anew. But instead of being built as tappable icons inside a mobile OS, they are plugging directly into the conversations of LLMs like Microsoft CoPilot and Anthropic’s Claude. Today, OpenAI—the largest AI platform with 800 million weekly users—is openi…

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…

As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winter—and put their holiday bookstore gift cards to work—they’ll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next? “People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there,” says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. “Where do you start?” Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It’s a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can’t yet replicate, though it’s still quite mathematical in natu…

Balancing on a railroad-tie-size beam of a platform floating in Spain’s Vigo Bay, Ricardo Tur crouches and points below. Dangling several feet underwater is a pen the size of a garden shed, home to 80 octopuses. I squat too, hoping to glimpse even a single arm—there are 640 of them down there! In my excitement, I lean too far and almost fall in. Tur is a marine biologist who for the past decade has been feeding the octopuses on this batea, the Spanish term for the 65-foot-by-82-foot raft I’m on. The raft’s owner, Carlos Veiga, a short, fit 75-year-old who has fished the planet’s oceans since the Franco era, stands nearby. Around us in this inlet, which contains …

The small American bookstore is back. Over the last five years, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. jumped by 70%. In 2025 alone, 422 new bookstores opened, according to the American Booksellers Association. The industry’s success was far from inevitable. For a long time, indie bookstores were struggling. In 1995, when Amazon opened as the “Earth’s largest bookstore” and started undercutting the prices at brick-and-mortar stores, readers quickly started shopping online. Small stores, which were already facing competition from chains like Borders, started to close. By 2009, the number of independent bookstores across the country had dropped to an all-time …

Running a solo business can feel like operating without a map at times. Sometimes you can stumble along the path, figuring things out as you go. Other days, you look around and realize that you’ve wandered pretty far off course. One of the hardest parts is not having anyone to rely on for guidance. That’s why community matters so much for solopreneurs. Rather than operating in a vacuum, you can bounce ideas off other people. Or you may find that community reduces your feelings of loneliness and isolation. The sooner you find (or build!) a community, the easier it becomes to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of being a solopreneur. The connections that …