Have We Reached the End of an Era for Online Celebrities?

"Making the argument is Reed Duchscher, a talent manager whose clients have included the aforementioned MrBeast, which gives this assertion more gravity than you might expect.Duchscher voiced this opinion in comments made to Dan Whateley of Business Insider. His prediction is that the future of online celebrity won't involve widely popular figures but rather the online creators who find audiences in more focused spaces."

"It's much easier to build businesses when you have a hyper-niche, scaled audience because the product makes a lot more sense," he told Business Insider. He also pointed to social media algorithms that focus on more specialized videos and posts than more general interest ones. And there's also the matter of how those algorithms are constantly evolving: The hyper-granular way that MrBeast sought to understand the inner workings of the YouTube algorithm may no longer be a viable path to stardom."

"There are other reasons to heed Duchscher's comments about the future of online celebrity. Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room is the pending spinoff of TikTok's U.S. operations. Will that be a seamless transition, or will the kind of videos that found an audience under TikTok's current management no longer be as viable?There's also the growth of AI-generated content, something that has made it harder to find quality material online, regardless of your preferred platform."

Online celebrity is likely to move away from a model centered on a few widely popular figures toward creators who cultivate hyper-niche, scaled audiences. Hyper-niche audiences make business models easier because products align more closely with audience needs. Social media algorithms increasingly prioritize specialized videos and posts over general-interest content, reducing the effectiveness of strategies that once exploited platform mechanics. The pending spinoff of TikTok's U.S. operations could disrupt the kinds of videos that previously succeeded. Growth of AI-generated content further complicates discovery of high-quality material and may alter which creators can gain traction.

Read at InsideHook