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SOUND STRATEGIES: The Innovators Going Global With African Music

<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-eswatini-and-south-africa-dj-and-record-producer">eSwatini and South Africa | DJ and record producer</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-spotify-monthly-listeners-1-8-million-youtube-total-average-views-33-million-views">Spotify Monthly Listeners:1.8 Million YouTube Total Average Views: 33 Million views</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center" id="h-social-media-net-worth-instagram-2-million-twitter-390-k-facebook-236k-tiktok-1-7-million">SOCIAL MEDIA NET WORTH Instagram: 2 Million Twitter: 390.K Facebook: 236K TikTok: 1.7 Million</h3>



Words and Curation: Chanel Retief|Art Director: Lucy Nkosi | Photography: Katlego Mokubyane Photography Assistant: Sbusiso Sigidi Studio: NewKatz Studio, Johannesburg| Videographer: @astro.vn | CNBC Africa Videographer: Thabo Mathebula| Video Editor: Chanel Retief| Styling: Bontlefeela Mogoye and Wanda Baloyi | Outfits supplied by: Kworks Design; Imprint South Africa; House of Suitability; LSJ Designs| Hair &amp; Makeup: Makole Made



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center">
“What do I do to make sure I stay relevant? I’ve been granted this beautiful blessing. How do I make it the rest of my life?”
</blockquote>



ZWANE, ALSO known as Uncle Waffles, is a true depiction of Generation Z, the demographic cohort shaped by the digital age and shifting financial landscape. Speaking to FORBES AFRICA about her trending accomplishments, Zwane says becoming an artist was not her initial plan. Destiny ordained it. And how.



“During the Covid-19 lockdown, I was working for a broadcasting company. I was doing small interviews with creatives here and there,” Zwane says. “And then one day I interviewed a DJ.” Zwane asked the DJ if she too could learn the art.



“It went from just a conversation to a couple of sessions, to eight hours a day for nine months, to falling in love with something I didn&#8217;t think I could love. I took a risk; I put out a small post I edited on Picsart, [and here I am].”



Through the star power of social media, the eSwatini- born DJ was able to reach millions of viewers and that kick-started her career. Raised by a single mother who believed she could be whatever she wanted to be, gave her the added confidence.



Indeed, it is risky business becoming an artist.



“She encouraged me to just go for it,” Zwane says. “As much as she was always like ‘do it but have a backup plan’, she always believed that because I am creatively inclined, I should just go for it. So when I was packing my bags and going to find gigs, she always believed in me.&#8221;



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Following the release of her debut single Tanzania, which reportedly took three months to perfect, Zwane’s creation was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the eighth best Afropop song of 2022, with critics describing her as “a global ambassador for Amapiano”. From across the world, she has received praise from award-winning A-list artists such as Beyoncé, Ciara and Drake, who have described her as a “top DJ [with] top sound”, giving further impetus to her fame.



“There is this really cool DJ out right now, her name is Uncle Waffles,” American singer, actor, and television personality Kelly Rowland reportedly said in May.



. “&#8230;She is so cool. She just played at Coachella, but I have known about this girl for at least about a year now.”



However, as successful as she has been, it has not been without roadblocks.



Still young and entering the industry the way she did, staying relevant is crucial to Zwane.



“Being thrown into the industry, I had to learn while running. Because the typical stories [are] that you blow up, and then it falls away, you kind of disappear into the mix. So for me, I&#8217;ve blown up, [but] what do I do to make sure I stay relevant? I&#8217;ve been granted this beautiful blessing. How do I make it the rest of my life?”



For artists, it is not only about the music anymore. The stance taken by many entering the sector is that it&#8217;s also about positioning yourself as a brand. Beyoncé had athleisure brand Ivy Park, which was in collaboration with Adidas on several collections.



American rapper and singer-songwriter Travis Scott launched not only a burger with McDonald’s but also a sneaker with Nike.



Luckily for Zwane, it’s no different as she has gained several endorsement deals in this short span with some of the biggest brands in the business, including South African multinational mobile telecommunications company MTN, and supplements brand, Slow- Mag. Recently, the talk of the town in South Africa has been her collaboration with one of the world’s most popular fast-food brands, KFC.



In September, Zwane launched a new campaign for the brand featuring a food item in her name, the Uncle Waffles Burger. Despite mixed reviews, the significance of this “one-of-a-kind” burger was highlighted by KFC as showcasing “her journey in music and life at a time when her international success is gaining momentum”.



“This is why we chose to create a campaign that shared real-life locations that have contributed to Uncle Waffle&#8217;s success,” Hloni Mohope, Marketing Director at KFC Africa tells FORBES AFRICA. “Social posts dropped clues daily so fans could physically discover and unlock the beautifully-designed custom QR code artworks at each location. This allowed them to tangibly experience and follow Uncle Waffles&#8217; meteoric rise. This story-telling aspect has really resonated with fans and helped us spread the beauty of Amapiano and celebrate Uncle Waffles. We are so proud to have partnered with such a force. This campaign has seen two giants with great taste create magic and bring it [to] the people!”



&#8220;I want to become a holistic brand who dabbles in everything,” Zwane attests.



Part of this challenge – and something she has enjoyed doing – is the art of storytelling. Although there are those who downplay her DJing, especially as she is dancing, Zwane’s belief has always been to change the narrative.



“What you realize is that internationally, they don&#8217;t understand the music,” says the ‘Princess of Amapiano’ (as dubbed by Billboard). “But they can only understand it through you. You&#8217;re the one that tells the story. So they watch you, they understand that you&#8217;ve told the story, and you&#8217;ve gained a huge audience of people by doing so.”



Jocelyne Muhutu-Remy, Spotify’s sub-Saharan Africa Managing Director, wrote in August that in her opinion, young African artists are taking over the global stage and contributing to the growth of the African market, which could even rival markets like Korean pop (k-pop) in the international arena.



“This young population continues to grow rapidly while African talent across both spheres of music and sports is booming in abundance. This is demonstrated by the rise in popularity



and proliferation of African genres like Amapiano and Afrobeats internationally,” Muhutu-Remy wrote.



It’s Zwane’s time, from performances at the prestigious Coachella and the Met Gala (“fashion’s biggest night out”) after- party in May, attended by some of the world&#8217;s biggest names in the entertainment and music business, to having a BBC RADIO 1 Residency, Zwane wants to see more young women take center stage but hopes that they don’t feel the imminent pressure to always be viral or trending.



Her advice: “Your success can come at a rate that&#8217;s perfectly fine to you. The idea that you blow up and your life changes tomorrow is not as easy. You can literally be me with just a little more time.



But maybe you could even do better than me because you had more time. You have got to figure out who exactly you want to be.”



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Meet Cover Star: Lungelihle Zwane (Uncle Waffles)-“I WANT TO BECOME A HOLISTIC BRAND”

Kobina Ackon, popularly known as Wode Maya, is Ghana’s first YouTuber to hit over a million subscribers. His channel creating positive African content has won him followers and a fortune.



AT JUST 23 YEARS OLD, AMERICAN YOUTUBE megastar Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has reportedly amassed over 10 billion views on his YouTube channel, and taken home a staggering $54 million in 2021 by posting hilarious and philanthropic content.



In 2019, CNBC reported that a survey done by Danish toy-maker Lego found that about a third of children aged between eight and 12 dream of becoming vloggers or YouTubers; the survey polled kids in the United States, China and the United Kingdom.



But that trend has now slowly also made its way into Africa. And young content creators on the continent are glued to their monitors and screens to catch up on all the social media action and monetize it, just like their global counterparts.



KobinaAckon, popularly known by the moniker Wode Maya,is one such African sensation – he is Ghana’s first YouTuber to hit over a million subscribers.



But Ackon never aspired to be a digital star. He had wanted to become an aeronautical engineer. He and his family had humble beginnings in the Western Region of Ghana, where they lived five siblings to one room and used rice bags as school bags. Ackon was taught from an early age the value of humility. After completing his secondary school education in Ghana, Ackon relocated to China to further his studies as an aeronautical engineer.



But contrary to what most people believe, success on YouTube did not come overnight for him. In fact, it was a slow and steady rise filled with trial and error tracking analytics that would guide him to the right blend of content to identify a niche that would give him six-figure success.



That said, the genesis of his YouTube channel was quite an by accident.



“I never wanted to be a YouTuber. During vacation, I couldn’t travel because I didn’t have money to go back to Ghana and so we spent our time in our dorms. So, a friend came to me and said ‘let’s go out and shoot a video’. I was the main character in that video.



“Afterwards, they gave me the video and I realized I didn’t have a pen drive or anywhere to save this video so I decided to save it on the internet and that is when I saved it on YouTube,” recalls Ackon. That video became a sensation amongst his friends and based on the positive feedback, Ackon decided to do another video detailing how he met his Chinese girlfriend. He got a 1,000 followers but unfortunately his subsequent efforts didn’t fare too well.



“I did more comedic videos and people said you are not funny and they stopped watching them. But I had a passion for it so I kept doing it and started doing more research on the platform. That is when I started consuming a lot of content on YouTube and realized I can actually be a millionaire on YouTube.”



But his Eureka moment would come after convincing his father to let him try content creation rather than engineering.



“So, I kept on pushing for two years and trying to make it work until my dad found one of my videos and got extremely mad at me and that is when my mum came in and said I can do whatever I want and she will take care of my dad. Two weeks later, my dad gave me his blessing and told me one thing that changed the game for me. He said you speak Chinese, so why don’t you use the Chinese language to bridge the gap between Africans and Chinese people and that was my breakthrough,” avers Ackon. He took his father’s advice and his channel grew to 8,000 subscribers. Ackon had found his niche and things began to slowly take off. He began making videos to help the Chinese better understand Africa and Africans and before long, he had peaked at about 100,000 subscribers.



But even then, something wasn’t adding up for Ackon.



“I felt like the videos I was doing was attracting Africans to China but China was not my country and I am trying to change the narrative of Africans living in China but it was still not working. So, I said to myself ‘let me come to Africa and preach about Africa to Chinese people’.”



That’s when he discovered that even Africansdidn’t know much about other countries on the continent. In 2018, he made the decision to start profiling the continent of Africa to not only the Chinese but to Africans both at home and in the diaspora. He received a loan from a Chinese friend who booked him on a pan-African tour of five countries.



“When I did that, within a month, I had 50,000 people following my channel. And it had taken me four years to get to 100,000 people. It showed me that a lot of people were yearning for African content,” says Ackon.



Today, with over 1.1 million subscribers, Ackonsays he is raking in anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a month from his YouTube channel. Most of his revenue comes from YouTube advertisements as well as from charging up to $10,000 a pop to profile Africa’s brightest entrepreneurs.Along the way, he has also picked up some invaluable pearls of wisdom from them.



“The youth of Africa don’t really have mentors and during Covid is when I had the chance to spend time with African entrepreneurs and they changed my life in the way of investment and I actually started investing in 2021. I had money but it was sitting in a bank and I didn’t know what to do with it because our parents taught us that if you have money, keep it in the bank, get married buy a house and buy a car and that is what I was doing. Until I met entrepreneurs and that is when I decided to invest in land, buy real estate and hired a team of about 10 people who work for me to expand the brand,” says Ackon.



His next milestone is to interview Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, on how he built his wealth. He also wants his channel to only push out positive African narratives to the world.For now, he certainly has the world’s attention.

Untitled

CHANNELING FAME: Meet Ghana’s first YouTuber to hit over a million subscribers

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



YouTube <a href="https://twitter.com/YouTubeInsider/status/1550153517842587661" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> Thursday it will take down misinformation related to abortion on its platform worldwide, including content that “provides instructions” for unsafe abortion procedures without scientific support as well as false claims such as that the procedure causes infertility, as social media companies battle the spread of misinformation in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



YouTube prioritizes “connecting people to content from authoritative sources on health topics,” and will “continuously review our policies &amp; products as real world events unfold,&#8221; the company said in a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/YouTubeInsider/status/1550153517842587661" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thread</a>&nbsp;on Twitter.&nbsp;



YouTube also plans to attach an information panel to abortion-related content on the platform to direct viewers to credible sources.



The policy will come into effect Thursday, and marks an addition to the company’s existing misinformation policies on Covid-19, vaccine and elections.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Experts have sounded&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/deadly-abortion-misinformation-rings-alarm-bells-for-doctors-tiktok?sref=5EPYOKdS" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alarms</a>&nbsp;about a spike in misinformation related to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in June. Videos on social media platforms sharing potentially dangerous ways to induce abortions with herbs have since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/tiktok-abortion-herbs-misinformation-death-1376101/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proliferated</a>&nbsp;on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. TikTok has said it is working to remove videos about abortion that violate its medical misinformation policy,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/health/abortion-misinformation-social-media/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to CNN. YouTube, meanwhile, has come under&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/tech/youtube-fact-checkers-letter/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fire</a>&nbsp;from fact-checking organizations in recent years for failing to take enough action to combat the spread of misinformation on its platform. Google, YouTube’s parent company,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/01/google-delete-location-data-abortion-clinic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pledged</a>&nbsp;earlier this month to automatically delete the location data of users who visit abortion clinics after some abortion rights advocates raised concerns the data could be used to prosecute those who seek to access abortions in states where the procedure is illegal. Law enforcement has frequently turned to Google for data in recent years, executing more than 40,000 U.S. search warrants and subpoenas for user information in the first half of 2020,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/05/abortion-bans-heighten-scrutiny-google-its-user-data/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google</a>.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/tech/youtube-abortion-misinformation-policy/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube will start removing misinformation related to abortion</a>&nbsp;(CNN)



<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/tech/youtube-fact-checkers-letter/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">More than 80 fact-checking organizations call out YouTube&#8217;s &#8216;insufficient&#8217; response to misinformation</a>&nbsp;(CNN)



<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/05/abortion-bans-heighten-scrutiny-google-its-user-data/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Abortion bans heighten scrutiny on Google and its user data</a> (Washington Post)



By Madeline Halpert, Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration, a silhouetted woman holds a

YouTube Will Take Down Abortion-Related Misinformation

TOPLINE YouTube has removed two videos from independent journalists documenting the Capitol riots, including one from a progressive news outlet, causing frustration that the Google-owned company’s efforts to combat right-wing misinformation is harming good-faith journalism.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h3>



<ul><li>YouTube removed a video Wednesday from progressive news outlet Status Coup depicting a Capitol police officer getting crushed in a doorway by rioters, which has since been licensed by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/09/us/officer-crushed-capitol-riot-video/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CNN </a>and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2021/jan/10/police-officer-crushed-in-doorway-by-rioters-during-capitol-breach-video" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Guardian</a>.</li></ul>



<ul><li>YouTube also took down a video from independent journalist Ford Fischer, who uploaded footage from former President Donald Trump’s speech and the crowd’s reaction before rioters stormed the Capitol—a key moment in the impeachment complaint against Trump.</li></ul>



<ul><li>In notices to both channels, YouTube stated that “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.”</li></ul>



<ul><li>Both Fischer and Status Coup co-founder Jordan Chariton told Forbes they were baffled and angry that YouTube can’t tell the difference between raw footage meant to document a historical event and bad-faith conspiracy theorists intentionally promoting misinformation about the election.  </li></ul>



<ul><li>It’s unclear if YouTube’s algorithm mistakenly flagged both videos in the first place, but in a series of <a href="https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1356760557454389249?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweets </a>the company said Fischer’s videos don’t “include countervailing views or sufficient context of the claims made in the footage” and then demonized his entire account. (YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes and it has not responded publicly to Status Coup).</li></ul>



<ul><li>That policy, though, doesn’t appear to be enforced against news outlets, such as <a href="https://youtu.be/5fiT6c0MQ58" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NBCNews </a>and the <a href="https://youtu.be/pUXRd2zRVBA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Telegraph</a>, that have uploaded the speech in full without any additional reporting or context.</li></ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h3>



Following the election, YouTube was criticized for moving slower than other platforms in addressing election misinformation. It wasn’t until December when it decided to ban content disputing the election results. And after the January 6 attack, which was caused by conspiracy theories about the election, both Twitter and Facebook banned Trump indefinitely, while it took Youtube a week to announce a suspension. Still, all of the major social media networks have drawn outrage from Republicans and other&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problematic-and-perplexing-european-leaders-side-with-trump-over-twitter-ban/?sh=7d8f98313b59">critics&nbsp;</a>who say Big Tech is exerting too much control over the internet. Some already&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90592060/capitol-attack-fascism-surveillance-censorship" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">warned</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1357148730496069640?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">crackdowns&nbsp;</a>could lead to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/big-tech-censorship-left-conservative-purge-jason-rantz" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unintended&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/censorship-big-tech-facebook-twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">consequences</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critics">CHIEF CRITICS</h3>



YouTube’s treatment of Status Coup has caused Chariton to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JordanChariton/status/1357066676546723841?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rethink&nbsp;</a>how tech companies handle misinformation. After the Capitol attack, Chariton thought that outlets spreading conspiracy theories should be “taken off the air.” But now he&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JordanChariton/status/1357067605413101573?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">says&nbsp;</a>those “not directly calling for people to commit violence” have the “right to spew misinformation and/or conspiracies dressed up as journalism.” “You can&#8217;t have Silicon Valley platforms that are frankly making decisions to avoid regulation determining through their algorithm what is and isn&#8217;t trustworthy news,” he said.&nbsp;



Fischer said his video, which showed the crowd chanting “fight for Trump” before the attack, is crucial for the public to see because Trump will stand trial in the Senate over whether he incited the riot.&nbsp;<a href="https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/people/jay-ulfelder" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jay Ulfelder</a>, a fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1357098264395448324?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote&nbsp;</a>in an email to YouTube that Fischer’s videos also “serve as crucial archival material for future scholars looking to get a better sense of what happened than our data or other news sources can provide.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h3>



This isn’t the first time YouTube has taken action against both Fischer and Status Coup. In 2019, Fischer was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/06/06/in-searching-for-middle-ground-youtube-angers-everyone/?sh=4dc666c524b5">demonetized </a>during a crackdown on Holocaust denialism after two of his videos were removed. The first showed pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters shouting down a Holocaust denier at that year’s American Israel Public Affair Committee conference. The other was raw footage of a speech given by neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich Enoch. Fischer wasn’t promoting the views shown in the footage, but it still took seven months for YouTube to re-monetize his channel. Meanwhile, Status Coup had a livestream of a Second Amendment rally <a href="https://twitter.com/JordanChariton/status/1351231373873446914?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">taken down</a> last month because it violated YouTube’s firearms policy.



By Rachel Sandler, Forbes Staff

US-POLITICS-ELECTION-TRUMP

YouTube Is Taking Down Raw Footage From The Capitol Riot As It Tries To Crack Down On Misinformation

It’s easy to explain

The Highest-Paid YouTube Stars Of 2020

U.S. Supreme Court: Behind the Scenes

From Sheryl Sandberg To Tory Burch: Power Women Pay Tribute To Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The namesake star of Nickelodeon’s preschool hit&nbsp;Ryan’s Mystery Playdate&nbsp;appears on set in a bright orange space suit ready to embark on an imaginary interplanetary adventure with his parents.&nbsp;



With a snap of the clapboard his mother, Loann, offers up the skit’s opening line — “Spaceship to aliens&#8230;” — before her then-7-year-oldcuts her off: “It’s ‘Mothership&nbsp;to aliens…,” her son corrects, stopping production and the 58-member TV crew behind it.



“Ryan, never correct the mother ship,” gently chides executive producer Jeff Sutphen from the director’s chair.



Ryan shrugs off the admonition. He routinely memorizes everyone’s lines, and will sometimes be caught on camera mouthing dialog along with his parents — forcing the occasional re-shoot. His father, Shion Kaji, jokes that if he hesitates even slightly with his delivery, he worries Ryan might steal his lines.



“I have a lot of words,” Ryan says in his own defense.



Not that he needs to defend himself. One of the leading child influencers on the planet, his Ryan’s World YouTube channel boasts 24 million subscribers, and Forbes estimates he earned $26 million in 2019, enough to make him the country’s<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/12/18/the-highest-paid-youtube-stars-of-2019-the-kids-are-killing-it/#64bd924a38cd">&nbsp;highest paid YouTuber.</a>



Kaji’s mindshare among preschoolers is so big that ViacomCBS network came running to him in its bid to stem the outflow of child viewers. T<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2020/02/24/viacomcbs-has-lost-its-children-nickelodeon-is-looking-for-them-on-youtube/#572ad1597a70">wo years ago Nickelodeon turned to Pocket.watch</a>, a digital studio devoted to turning YouTube stars into global franchises, to bring Ryan to the kids’ TV network that’s been home to such iconic children’s characters as SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.



Welcome to the new world of children’s television. Once the domain of educators, pediatricians and psychologists concerned with fostering child development and school readiness, the D.I.Y. culture of the internet has thrown open the doors to anyone with an attention-grabbing idea. Sure, you can still find Big Bird on TV (though the feathery&nbsp;Sesame Street&nbsp;icon has moved his nest to HBO) and reruns of&nbsp;Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood&nbsp;online. But those classics are getting crowded out by shows like JibJab’s Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, whose StoryBots monochromatic robot characters were born on YouTube and now live on Netflix, or the husband-and-wife duo, Derek and Cannis Holder, who created the popular YouTube channel&nbsp;Little Baby Bum, a collection of nursery rhymes.&nbsp;



These home-grown shows have attracted global audiences in the millions. “If you were a creator in the ‘80s, you&#8217;d walk into Nickelodeon and Disney and hope that the executive in charge of making decisions thought that you had something worthwhile,” says Gregg Spiridellis. “That person is no longer relevant if you&#8217;re a creator with the ability to actually make something. You can put it out into the world and get validation. These open platforms — YouTube, Instagram — give you the opportunity to go prove the worth of your content in a way that was never possible before.”&nbsp;



A digital native, Ryan grew up on YouTube, singing along to nursery rhyme videos and watching “unboxing videos,” one of the peculiar genres of the platform, in which objects — toys, electronics, you name it — get unpacked to great fanfare. The breakout began one spring day when Ryan, age 3, asked his mother: “How come I’m not on YouTube?”



On a lark, Loann drove him toTarget and bought a Lego Duplo train set, which Ryan unpacked in his first “unboxing” video. Shot onan iPhone without edits, attention to lighting or animation, the video looks painfully amateurish today. Her son loved them, though, and so did family members in Vietnam and Japan, who enjoyed watching him grow up from a distance. “YouTube was this great platform for us to broadcast Ryan’s growth,” Shion recalls.



A single video changed the trajectory of the home-movie project and thrust the Kajis into the vanguard of YouTube’s burgeoning tribe of family vloggers. A student of the new medium, Ryan had noticed a novel twist to the unboxing genre, which featured kids cracking open giant eggs with multiple toys, instead of ripping open one box at a time.



The Kaji version became “GIANT Lightning McQueen Egg Surprise,” a seven-minute video, in which Ryan is roused from his Lightning McQueen race-car bed to extract toy cars, trucks and airplanes of various sizes from a giant red egg. The resulting video has been watched more than 1 billion times. Suddenly they found themselves accidental successors to TV legends like Fred Rogers,&nbsp;Sesame Street&nbsp;creators the Children’s Television Workshop (now the Sesame Workshop) and Muppet-maker Jim Henson.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“After four months, we were one of the top kids’ creators,” says Shion, in an interview conducted from the family’s 9,000-square-foot production facility in Texas. Still, as  improbable as it seems, no one in the family thought about cashing in on all that traffic until Loann stumbled upon a post about monetization while seeking tips on improving the quality of the videos. 



“I was like, ‘Hon, you can make money on YouTube.’ Shion’s response, recalls Loann, was&nbsp; ‘Are you sure?’”&nbsp;



She was, and she set a goal of $20 a week, enough to cover the cost of buying a new toy for Ryan to unbox each week, like a never-ending birthday celebration. When the first check arrived, for $100, “I was so proud,” she says. It was nothing, in retrospect: By the fall of 2016, the charismatic 4-year-old with an infectious smile and affinity for&nbsp;Thomas &amp; Friends&nbsp;trains and cars had amassed an online following of 4 million subscribers.&nbsp;



Shion and Loann quit their day jobs that year and devoted themselves full-time to the family’s budding media empire. They hired a video editor so they could focus on that aspect of production they enjoyed most: spending time with Ryan, playing around and filming. To shelter their son from burnout, they drew inspiration from Japan’s Virtual YouTubers, which feature anime-style cartoon characters who attract sizable online followings. The Kajis created animated alter-egos like superhero Red Titan (Ryan drew the stick-figure prototype himself), and an adventurous alligator, Gus the Gummy Gator. Today they have a roster of six virtual “friends” for Ryan, each depicting a facet of his personality.



As the output expands, so does the team. Twenty-eight animators, video editors and other creatives working for the family’s production company, Sunlight Entertainment, now generate the steady flow of educational videos, kid-friendly science experiments and cartoons that populate the eight channels that comprise Ryan’s World.&nbsp;



It’s not been a completely smooth ride, all things considered. The consumer watchdog Truth in Advertising filed a complaint last August with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing the Kajis’ YouTube channel, previously known as Ryan ToysReview, of deceptive advertising, saying it’s difficult for preschoolers to discern Ryan&#8217;s “innocent antics” from paid endorsements. The complaint cited as an example one June 2019 video, in which Ryan operates a make-believe Hardee’s drive-through window and delivers a “Star Pals” meal to his father. It’s the same month that the fast food chain announced a toy promotion featuring Ryan.



The regulatory agency hasn’t announced any public action against the YouTube channel, though this month the FTC said it would begin reviewing its guidelines concerning influencer marketing on social media, potentially ensnaring the Kajis and other online influencers in a cultural and political scrum over the commercialization of childhood.



Shion says he welcomes direction from regulators and works with a legal team to help identify online content that’s advertising. “The one thing that was very difficult for all the influencers (is) there was no clear guidance from FTC until recently,” he says.



Sorting it all out will be critical to keeping the millions flowing, even as Shion and Loann strive to balance the demands of Ryan’s budding entertainment career with their desire to give their son the life of a typical elementary-school kid. He attends public school and maintains a crowded calendar of after-school activities that includes playing&nbsp;Fortnite&nbsp;and&nbsp;Roblox&nbsp;with friends online, swimming (he’s perfecting his backstroke), computer coding, Taekwondo (he’s working toward earning a green belt) and gymnastics, where Ryan’s kinetic energy is expressed through headstands and flips.



In a room surrounded by scores of toys that bear his image, the child phenomenon reflects about the quirks of internet celebrity, and how complete strangers will approach him, and call him their best friend.



“They&#8217;re like ‘Ryan I saw you on my iPad and your mom and dad on my iPad too,’” Ryan says, nervously tugging on the long sleeves of his green shirt and swiveling back and forth on an office chair. He says he’s found it easy to make friends at school. “Some knew me just from who I am. Some people know me from YouTube.”



Put him in front of a camera, though, and he comes alive. Posing for photos, he offers up a fresh expression with every shutter click, sporting a big grin and thumbs up, an eye roll with a tongue out, another confidently grinning with arms folded, poking a finger at the lens, shrugging. It may be a hint of things to come. At the end of his first season on Nickelodeon, he penned a thank-you note to the director.



“Next season,” he wrote. “I want to direct, too.”

Funimation Films Presents The North American Premiere Of “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising”

How Ryan’s YouTube Playdate Created An Accidental (Eight-Year-Old) Millionaire

While a growing number of influencers are dictating what
brands sell, beauty entrepreneur Jackie Aina is of the view they have the duty
to use their platforms responsibly.&nbsp;&nbsp; 



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Mixing up the inspirational with informative, the
thought-provoking with tongue-in-cheek, and sarcasm with calling out brands for
not being inclusive, Jackie Aina is influencing the beauty industry one product
at a time. 



With over three million YouTube followers and 1.2 million on
Instagram, Aina is one of the stand-out digital influencers cashing in on
online followings to broadcast messages to millennials, lifestyle brands and
billion-dollar cosmetic conglomerates. 



Although Aina does all of this with a dose of humor, the journey to YouTube stardom started some 10 years ago for the 31-year-old beauty entrepreneur, when she was desperately searching for a way to escape loneliness and unfulfillment. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Her Brush With Business (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/27/her-brush-with-business/" target="_blank">Her Brush With Business</a>



“I had gone on to marry the guy who inspired me to join the
military. We were stationed in Hawaii and we were very unhappily married. I
didn’t have a job and YouTube was buzzing in 2009. We had a lot of Asian faces
who were really the faces of beauty on YouTube and I didn’t really see anyone
like me. So, my best friend, literally every day, said ‘why don’t you put your
makeup looks on YouTube’ and I always said no.”



Her friend’s unrelenting pursuit finally paid off.&nbsp; 



“So, one day, I decided I wasn’t doing anything, and being
bored and not being fulfilled emotionally and I didn’t have a lot of positive
things going on for me at the time, so that left me a lot of time to consume
content and then I started creating it.



&nbsp;“I truly tapped into
something that I needed at the time mentally and that was great. People didn’t
know me but they would just gas me up; they were so nice and would always give
me positive encouragement which I really needed at the time,” Aina says.



That was a lifetime ago. These days, the Los Angeles-born influencer, who was called&nbsp; ‘beauty influencer of the year’ by Women’s Wear Daily last year, is short-listed among the top beauty influencers in the United States, with lucrative brand collaborations behind her. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">Most notably is her collaboration with the Estée Lauder-owned brand, Too Faced, as part of the Born This Way foundation range, which she helped to create. </blockquote>



Celebrities and influencers are increasingly being paid
several thousands of dollars per tweet or Instagram post to promote products,
services and even social causes. 



With most millennials avoiding posts that look like
sponsored ads, brands are now increasingly interested in ads that appear
organic. And that is where influencers come in. 



Remuneration for such posts is usually decided after
considering factors like number of followers, popularity, engagement, frequency
of posts, as well as the format of the post. 



Furthermore, influencer accounts with&nbsp; massive follower counts can leverage their
social media clout to showcase brands to their followers and perhaps, most
importantly, use their brand voice to fight against injustice in the industry,
something Aina is passionate about.



“A lot of years on YouTube were spent seeing comments from
people who say things. It is easy to sit and complain but what are you doing to
change the industry?” 



In response, Aina decided to use her platform to fight for
the change she wanted to see in the industry. She holds other influencers
accountable for offensive remarks and joins controversial and tough discussions
about issues like colorism in the beauty industry. And brands are starting to
listen. 



It was her outspoken voice in the beauty space that caught the attention of the beauty conglomerate, Too Faced, which short-listed Aina to help expand its foundation range and ensure the makeup undertones would also compliment women of color.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/08/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/" target="_blank">At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever</a>



“That was a testament to brands actually listening. Just
because you think someone is not watching, doesn’t mean they are not watching.
They are definitely watching. Sometimes all you really need is that one
opportunity and that can be leveraged over and over again,” Aina says.



As brands increasingly turn away from traditional marketing,
towards social influencers, young, connected digital natives like Aina, will
continue to play an important role in the success of beauty brands for the
foreseeable trend-obsessed digital future.

Jackie

Making Up For Millions

YouTube took down more than 58 million videos and 224 million comments during the third quarter based on violations of its policies, the unit of Alphabet Inc’s (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O">GOOGL.O</a>) Google said on Thursday in an effort to demonstrate progress in suppressing problem content.



Government officials and interest groups in the United States, Europe and Asia have been pressuring YouTube, Facebook Inc (<a href="https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O">FB.O</a>) and other social media services to quickly identify and remove extremist and hateful content that critics have said incite violence.



The European Union has proposed online services should face steep fines unless they remove extremist material within one hour of a government order to do so.



An official at India’s Ministry of Home Affairs speaking on the condition of anonymity on Thursday said social media firms had agreed to tackle authorities’ requests to remove objectionable content within 36 hours.



This year, YouTube began issuing quarterly reports about its enforcement efforts.



As with past quarters, most of the removed content was spam, YouTube said.



Automated detection tools help YouTube quickly identify spam, extremist content and nudity. During September, 90 percent of the nearly 10,400 videos removed for violent extremism or 279,600 videos removed for child safety issues received fewer than 10 views, according to YouTube.



But YouTube faces a bigger challenge with material promoting hateful rhetoric and dangerous behavior.



Automated detection technologies for those policies are relatively new and less efficient, so YouTube relies on users to report potentially problematic videos or comments. This means that the content may be viewed widely before being removed.



Google added thousands of moderators this year, expanding to more than 10,000, in hopes of reviewing user reports faster. YouTube declined to comment on growth plans for 2019.



It has described pre-screening every video as unfeasible.



The third-quarter removal data for the first time revealed the number of YouTube accounts Google disabled for either having three policy violations in 90 days or committing what the company found to be an egregious violation, such as uploading child pornography.



YouTube removed about 1.67 million channels and all of the 50.2 million videos that were available from them.



Nearly 80 percent of the channel takedowns related to spam uploads, YouTube said. About 13 percent concerned nudity, and 4.5 percent child safety.



YouTube said users post billions of comments each quarter. It declined to disclose the overall number of accounts that have uploaded videos, but said removals were also a small fraction.



In addition, about 7.8 million videos were removed individually for policy violations, in line with the previous quarter. &#8211; Reuters



&#8211; Paresh Dave and Sankalp Phartiyal&nbsp;

YouTube-preneurs

Youtube, Under Pressure for Problem Content, Takes Down 58 Million Videos in Quarter

It’s 10p.m. on a Sunday in November at California’s Burbank Airport, and Jack Conte, the typically beaming, bearded half of the husband-and-wife musical duo Pomplamoose, is leaning back in a chair, his hoodie pulled over his head, trying to get some rest. Conte, 33, spent much of the weekend in Los Angeles jamming with his funk band, Scary Pockets, and now it’s time to return to San Francisco for an entirely different type of gig: his day job running Patreon, a website and mobile app where fans pay monthly subscriptions to support their favorite creators, from painters to podcasters, singers, dancers, writers, game designers and photographers.
The moment perfectly captures what Conte lightheartedly calls his “identity crisis”: being CEO and founder of a 100-person startup (valued in September at an estimated $400 million) without completely giving up on his passion for music, which is what led him to invent Patreon in the first place. “A lot of creators depend on us being a high-performance team,” Conte says during an interview at Patreon’s San Francisco office. “That’s the most important thing in the world to me, so there’s less time for music.”
Conte’s dedication stems from a conviction that Patreon can save content creators from having to survive on digital advertising – an all but impossible task for most – or resort to one-time campaigns on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The company is built on a counter-intuitive bet that fans are willing – even eager – to pay monthly subscriptions for content that they could get for free as long as it helps support their favorite artists and it’s easy to do. There’s reason to believe he’s right. More than a million Patreon users are helping provide some 50,000 artists with a predictable monthly paycheck. “On Kickstarter and Indiegogo, creators essentially have to start over every time,” says Danny Rimer, a partner at Index Ventures who is a Patreon investor and board member. “It’s the same reason software companies went from licensed software to subscriptions: predictable revenue and better service for customers.”
Since Conte started Patreon four years ago with his Stanford University roommate Sam Yam, 33, who is CTO, the company has paid out more than $250 million to its artists – $150 million in 2017 alone. Patreon’s traction is fueled by a simple pledging system and the direct line it opens between artists and fans, or “patrons,” who get access to perks like live Q&amp;As or exclusive chats with the artists, and more casual behind-the-scenes footage than an artist might share on Instagram or Facebook. It also doesn’t hurt that being altruistic makes people feel good. In other words, Conte didn’t need to change human nature to get Patreon to work, he simply needed to facilitate the exchange between fan and artist.
While Patreon is no longer the only player in its category (Kickstarter launched a competitor called Drip in November), it is the largest – and it’s growing faster than ever. The number of patrons and creators and the amount pledged are all doubling yearly. Now Patreon is using some of the more than $100 million it has raised from investors, which include Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Freestyle Capital, to double its head count over the next year.
By some measures Patreon’s success defies logic. The average user pledges $12 per month, more than the cost of a basic subscription to Spotify or Netfl ix, which offers access to immense catalogs of video and music. (Some users pledge per piece.) Dozens of artists make more than $30,000 per month, including video reviewer Blind Wave and a capella singer Peter Hollens, who made about $400,000 on the site last year.
From the start, Patreon has taken a 5% cut of each pledge. That’s the same cut taken by Kickstarter and Indiegogo but far less than revenue-sharing programs on YouTube and Apple iTunes, which keep 45% and 30%, respectively. “The mission is to send as much money to creators as possible,” Conte says. The commissions generated an estimated $8 million in revenue last year.
Pledgers sign up for “tiers,” generally ranging from $1 to $10 – though some pay much more – for access to the artists’ perks. Ukulele performer Cynthia Lin, who offers fans live lessons, derives about half her income from Patreon and grew her fan base from 400 to 1,400 in the past year. With video “sketchbook tours” and chats, Chilean illustrator Fran Meneses pockets more than $4,000 per month, which supplements income from her Etsy shop and Instagram presence.
Creators join Patreon for free and don’t have to promise exclusivity. The site offers them instructions on how to use it most effectively. It also provides a growing list of back-office tools such as analytics and email management to help creators run membership campaigns modeled on those of NPR stations.
For now, Patreon is designed for creators who already have established followings but aren’t household names. Long term, Conte hopes to help fund bigger names and prove that technology can help restore the financial underpinnings for content creators that the internet has largely eroded.
Patreon’s artists-first ethos may be lucrative for some, but it comes with pitfalls, especially in a world where digital business models change frequently. “Creators need to diversify their incomes as much as possible so the rug can’t be pulled out from under them,” says Laura Chernikoff , executive director of the Internet Creators Guild.
For Conte the mission is personal. He grew up in bohemian-chic Marin County, just north of San Francisco, and was hooked on music from the age of six, when his father taught him the blues scale. While studying music and composition at Stanford, he started making YouTube videos with his then girlfriend, Nataly Knutsen, in 2007. (The two married in 2016.) In 2013 he drained his savings account, maxed out two credit cards and spent three months making an electronic music video, complete with robots and a replica of the Millennium Falcon cockpit. His fans loved the video, which got more than a million YouTube views in its first year. However, Conte pocketed just $54 from ad revenue over the video’s first month. To date, it has generated about $1,000. Not including Conte’s time, it had cost more than $10,000 to make. “It was this rock-bottom moment for me as a creator,” Conte says. He knew he’d created something of value but would never be paid for it. “That discrepancy led directly to the formation of Patreon,” he adds.
Conte discussed his idea with Yam, who programmed the site in months. It went live in May 2013, and within minutes more than 100 fans were pledging upwards of $700 a month to support Conte’s work. Within months Patreon had investors.
Conte is now eyeing a number of opportunities for growth. First is overseas expansion: The site is in English and takes only U.S. dollars, yet 40% of patrons are outside the U.S. Over time, Conte imagines more immersive features, such as virtual reality concerts. Farther out are somewhat fuzzy notions of turning Patreon into a provider of small-business services, including ticketing and merchandising, to help artists turn their passions into professions. “Artists don’t have to starve anymore,” Conte says. &#8211; Written by Kathleen Chaykowski

Digital Medici

The internet is a web of opportunities. Many look at YouTube for entertainment, but some look at it for business. The highest paid YouTube channel is PewDiePie who reportedly made $12 million last year, according to FORBES. Meet some Africans who are making money online.
<h4>Caspar Lee</h4>
Not many can say they were self-made millionaires by the age of 20. Caspar Lee can— thanks to YouTube.
“At the age of 16, I started making YouTube videos because I was bored and I could use them to procrastinate my homework way more effectively,” he says on YouTube.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5418" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Caspar-etch-126x300.jpg" alt="" width="126" height="300" />
After about a year and two unsuccessful YouTube channels, he started Dicasp (Director Caspar).
“Six months after starting Dicasp, it became fairly popular, so I traveled to England to meet and collaborate with people like Jack and Finn Harries, Sam Pepper, Marcus Butler, Alfie Deyes and Bertie Gilbert. These collabs dramatically increased my following, and I went back to South Africa with one intention: to make a life out of YouTube because there is nothing I love more.”
And it is what he has done. On December 31, 2012, he moved to England. Thirteen days later, he moved into his own flat.
“A huge part of me wanted to stay in South Africa but I am confident and positive I have made the right decision. Living in London allows me to work with some of the best YouTubers in the world on a day to day basis,” he says.
It is this dedication that has earned Lee over 6.8 million subscribers to his channel and over 649 million views.
This is big money.
According to reports, Lee was banking R5 million ($350,000) a year in 2014 and his net worth was estimated to be $2 million in 2015.
Lee says he has no idea how to describe his channel. He posts anything that comes to mind and takes suggestions from his subscribers.
His main source of income is the advertisements before and after his videos. His fame has also stirred him to acting and book writing.
<h4>Martin Lorton</h4>
Lorton started his IT career in 1991 but he lost his job in 2011.
“I had an idea that it was coming but I didn’t expect it to come so quickly,” he says.
It gave him time to tinker and play. He started sharing videos on YouTube for fun.
“I tried work doing solar power, energy audits and heat pump installations but none of that took off. After not being paid for a small solar-powered project and being rather peeved, I decided to try make money out of running my YouTube channel full time,” he says.
It took off.
He has over 2 million views on one video, over a million on another, and many with hundreds of thousands of views. In July 2013, at 18 months, he was earning about $5,000 per month; about $1,900 from YouTube and the rest from a sponsor.
“I have over 21 million views in total across my channel and average about 500,000 views per month with 620 videos… It’s no longer enough to make a viable full-time income from YouTube alone. In the last 18 months, the advertising rates on YouTube have dropped to a quarter of what they were in 2013 and my sponsor did not renew at the beginning of this year. My income now averages about $1,500 per month.”
Lorton has diversified into affiliate sales through Amazon, earns some money from crowd-funding platform Patreon, produces videos for the channels of other companies and sells advertising space on his website.
“It’s very difficult to start out now on YouTube and make a viable income. You really need to stand out among hundreds of thousands of other channels trying to do the same thing. Your chances of success now are really slim compared to when I started out.”
The channel is for people interested in solar power, electronic measurement equipment, and multimeters. He does reviews, tutorials, how-tos, fun testing, experiments, innovative ideas and solutions.
It may take a while for Lorton to start making as much as he used to, but it is $1,500 he didn’t have.
<h4>Nadav Ossendryver</h4>
Ossendryver has always been fascinated by wildlife. As an obsessive Kruger National Park visitor, his favorite pastime was asking his parents to flag down passing motorists asking them what they had seen. Eventually they tired of this and said no. Ossendryver looked to technology to solve his problem.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5419" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nadav-etch-182x300.jpg" alt="" width="182" height="300" />
At the age of 15, he founded Latest Sightings, a wildlife crowdsourcing site for visitors who are in the Kruger National Park to report the animals and events that they are seeing live. They report their location, time and sighting to Latest Sightings, which in turn broadcasts it on social media.
“At 15 I was naïve and phoned an app development company to ask them to develop my idea. They quoted R200,000 ($13,000) and I said ‘no thanks’ as I didn’t have that kind of money.”
He spent hours on YouTube teaching himself how to code an iPhone app.
“Within three weeks, I had the app out on the App Store. I used social media to grow a community of around 30,000 in three weeks. All of this for only $10 for the domain name for my site.”
Four years later, Ossendryver has one of the top-viewed YouTube channels in South Africa. With over 307,000 subscribers and over 351 million views worldwide, it makes money.
The dream of an eight-year-old boy may make headlines one day.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5413" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Theodora-300x297.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="297" />
<h4>Theodora Lee</h4>
Caspar Lee’s sister, Theodora Lee, is also making money online. She created her self-titled YouTube channel in 2013, and currently has over 230,000 subscribers and 10 million views. She is known for her advice to the young.
“Currently, I post weekly videos on YouTube that aim to uplift and educate people on coming-of-age topics. I like to chat openly about stuff we all go through so that people can feel less alone and find ways to get through their issues and be the happiest they can be,” she says on her blog.
Last year, she won Best YouTube Channel at the African Blogger Awards and was a finalist for Best African Blogger at the 2016 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. She is also working on her debut novel.

Before that first cup of coffee and the morning newspaper; you’ve probably checked your smartphone, taken your tablet from the bedside table and logged on. More and more brands are using social media as an inexpensive marketing tool. So, which brands are leading the pack in Africa?
Our methodology considered African brands and international brands operating in Africa. They had to be present on: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Initial data from socialbakers.com—a social media and digital analytics company—was compared with howwemadeitinafrica.com and africantoptwitterusers.com. The list was compiled on November 8.
The following indicators were considered, according to a percentage ratio: Facebook likes; the number of people ‘talking about’ the brand, which was also considered as a percentage of Facebook likes; Twitter followers and tweets and the number of YouTube views and subscribers.
Facebook likes are accumulated on an ongoing basis, whereas ‘talking about’ illustrates user-engagement, over a month, without any long-term following. In short, the ‘talking about’ as a percentage of Facebook likes category resolved the temporal discrepancy.
In 2011, Portland Communications and Tweetminster analyzed more than 11.5 million geo-located tweets, unearthing that Africa’s wealthiest countries dominate social media. South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco make up the top five in order of Twitter activity.
FORBES AFRICA found that although South Africa dominates Twitter activity; Northern Africa is the continental leader, in terms of brands with the greatest social media footprint. Seven of the top 20 brands are located in Egypt; four are located in South Africa and Morocco; three in West Africa and one in both Algeria and Kenya.
Social media was used extensively during the Arab Spring uprising, which erupted in December 2010. The fact that social media usage remains high in Egypt and Morocco and could be the lasting legacy of this historic moment in world and online history.
The telecommunications sector—be they manufacturers or service providers—has latched onto the internet capabilities of most mobile devices; 57% of tweets from Africa, are sent from a mobile phone, according to Portland Communications.
“…Telecommunications are intricately connected to the daily life experience of today’s consumer. Almost everything we do is supplemented by our mobile phones in some way… For this reason, consumers are always looking to get the best value from their telecommunications providers and they’re interested in what these companies have to say,” says Catherine Scott, social media manager at Quirk.
Twelve of the brands on the list were from the telecommunications sector; two from media and finance; one from retail and the food and beverage sector. Surprisingly, the fourth leading brand is a non-governmental organization—One Campaign, which works towards eliminating poverty in Africa.
The question remains: is customer engagement with these brands based on compelling content; mass-media marketing or the opportunity to voice discontent?
The brand with the highest number of Facebook likes and user-engagement by means of the ‘talking about’ category was Vodafone Egypt with 2,071,890 and 153,115 respectively. It also has the highest ‘talking about as a percentage of Facebook likes’ ranking, at 49%. Al-masry Al-youm, an Egyptian media channel, has the highest number of Twitter followers—979,455; yet Safaricom of Kenya had the greatest number of tweets—148,208. Tahrir Channel, of Egypt, has the greatest number of YouTube subscribers (97,782) and views (25,527,629).
Many a dinner table may speculate if social media can kill the mainstream media advertising star; the list indicates such a possibility.
Is the success of social media due to the vision of early adopters; its capability to mobilize social causes or the work of smart agencies, be they advertising or strategic? Could social media mean the death of the billboard? Take a look at the numbers.

#IsTheBillboardDead?

He has more than 190,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel; more than 10 million views and more than 130,000 Twitter followers; 70,000 Facebook subscribers and chances are, you’ve never heard of him. In his own words, “I am a South African teenager who sometimes talks to a camera.” He is, Caspar Lee.
His dry humor tweets range from “I had four too many strawberry milkshakes today” to “If my feet are happy then I am happy” and some which are slightly more risqué. The video content is made up of such simple concepts as babysitting his niece and nephew, prank videos that include getting passersby to send suggestive text messages to friends and a guide on how to be awesome.
“Usually I make videos that I edit and I do funny things in them,” says Lee in one of his YouTube videos.
The 18-year-old matric student, residing in Knysna, South Africa, started making videos in November 2011 out of boredom because he wanted to do more with his spare time. It was then that the self-confessed gaming addict turned to YouTube.
“And then I made another video and another video,” says Lee in his YouTube monologue titled ‘Pro YouTuber’.
“I’d won a competition in which I received R40,000 ($4,600) worth of equipment from Google including a Canon 60D with an L-Series Lens, two studio lights, microphones, stabilizers, other lenses and tripods,” says Lee in an email to me.
Yet, true fame only came when he started collaborating with YouTube stars in the United Kingdom such as Jack Harries (JacksGap), Sam Pepper (OfficialSamPepper), Marcus Butler (MarcusButlerTV) and Alfie Deyes (Pointlessblog).
“I went to England and met some of the best people in the world and they made videos with me,” says Lee.
This was a case of crossover audience marketing at its best. People started subscribing to Casper Lee’s YouTube account and now he is in a position to record his social media videos full-time.
“I’m gaining 1,700 new subscribers on YouTube a day at the moment—that’s more than 50,000 in the past month,” he says.
However, the story is so much more lucrative, as there are some economic rewards that come with online fame.
“Most people don’t know how lucrative YouTube is for the top 1,000 channels. It is a full time gig! Not only do you get paid to make videos on YouTube, you also get paid for all the other things that go along with it such as selling T-shirts, broadcasting live webcam shows, sponsorships, and so much more! It is so exciting,” he says.
Although he was hesitant to reveal how much he is earning to justify being a full-time YouTuber, Lee assures me that the top YouTubers are making a small fortune through shared advertising revenue models with YouTube and promotional work.
With YouTube comments galore from adoring fans which run along the lines of “How do you make your hair all sexy like that?” and “Hi, my name is Alison and I’m a unicorn,” it becomes quite evident that Lee is a hit with the ladies or just a hit in general with those who enjoy an energetic youngster from the Western Cape. In Caspar’s opinion, 99% of the things that go viral are either really funny, really sexy or really cute. The formula has proven to work for him.
Social media tends to be a bit like compound interest. The more followers you have, the more you are bound to receive. When asked about the secret to his fame, Lee enlightens me that it has something to do with being South African, which is a rarity on YouTube and the fact that he is very open and genuine.
With all this social media traction, not seen by some of the country’s biggest media and celebrity brands, what could marketing professionals and brands learn from Caspar Lee?
“I see so many marketers and brands automatically sharing everything they do and it just becomes irritating. Less is definitely more when it comes to social media. I don’t really follow any brands unless they’re funny because if I want to buy one of their products I’ll research it myself rather than having them shove their products down my throat every five minutes,” he says.
There is no talk of university degrees or studying in the near future. He plans to move to London in 2013 to become a professional YouTuber, or in other words, to record himself, in a room, upload it onto YouTube and make money through endorsements and advertising whilst entertaining a new following of people, that have subscribed to his accounts, since you started reading this article.

Tag: YouTube

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