• Instagram is testing a new program that pays creators for driving app traffic and sign-ups.
• The program, called "Referrals," offers $100 for every new user or 1,000 visits, up to $20,000.
• The test is limited to US-based creators and is invite-only, Meta told BI.

Instagram's got a new pitch for creators: Get paid for bringing people to the app.

The Meta-owned app has been quietly testing a program that pays creators for driving people to the app, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The program, called "Referrals," is an invite-only, limited test that pays US-based creators when people visit Instagram or sign up for a new Instagram account from links shared by the creator.

There are two ways creators can earn money, capped at $20,000, from Instagram's referrals:

1. Some creators will be able to earn $100 for every eligible new user who signs up for an Instagram account.
2. Other creators can earn $100 for every 1,000 "eligible visits" to the Instagram app.

For instance, Courtney Canfield, a creator who runs an Instagram page for her dog Rambo, was offered the latter.

Instagram's referral program is set to run for six weeks from May through June. Meta is working with a third-party partner called Glimmer to handle the payments, according to an Instagram help center page for the program.

The app is telling creators to share links — such as to their profile, reels, posts, stories, and channels — "off Instagram," on other websites and apps like TikTok, YouTube, Discord, and Substack, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.

Instagram has faced fierce competition from other apps like TikTok and YouTube. The new monetization test also comes as Meta's broader competition with other social media platforms takes center stage during the Federal Trade Commission's landmark antitrust case against the company.

Instagram has recently been testing a few new ways to incentivize creators to post to the app as it continues to compete for people's attention. Earlier this year, in January, when TikTok was on the brink of a potential ban, Instagram rolled out a "Breakthrough Bonus" for creators coming over from TikTok. Instagram also inked deals with some creators for exclusive-to-Instagram reels content that ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 a month over the course of three months.

Over the past few years, Instagram has also tested several creator monetization programs.

Instagram's not the only social-media platform to incentivize people to bring over new users. Last year, TikTok rolled out a referral program that rewarded people with shopping discounts and other financial incentives for inviting friends to the app, according to The Information.

• Hedra, a generative AI platform, creates images, video, and audio, with a focus on characters.
• Hedra raised $32 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz's Infrastructure fund.
• Read the pitch deck the startup used to raise its latest funding.

A video of a baby interviewing a dog on a podcast went viral last month.

No, it wasn't real. It was an AI-generated video created by comedian Jon Lajoie, who used Hedra, an AI video generation platform, to make the animation.

Hedra's platform allows users to generate images, video, and audio with its web-based content creation studio.

"Our model and technology focuses on the most controllable, compelling characters, whether that's a hyperrealistic human or an animated character or even an animal," Hedra's CEO, Michael Lingelbach, told Business Insider.

On Thursday, Hedra announced that it raised a $32 million Series A fundraising round led by Andreessen Horowitz's Infrastructure fund. The round included returning investors such as A16z Speedrun, Abstract, and Index Ventures.

Since its launch in 2024, the AI video startup has rapidly raised capital. In August, it announced a $10 million seed investment round. In March, Amazon's Alexa Fund announced that it invested in the startup and several other AI companies. Hedra said it has raised a total of $44 million but has not disclosed a valuation.

Competition in the generative AI is hot, with buzzy companies like Captions, HeyGen, Synthesia, and Runway building tech around video and avatars (Hedra specified that it is not an avatar company).

"We're not trying to compete with Google Veo, we're not trying to compete with Sora," Lingelbach said. "We're focusing really firmly on building the best character models, and that's something that with this additional capital we can make another step function in doing."

Hedra's Character-3 "omnimodal" model combines images, text, and audio to generate video. Creating a character with Hedra begins by uploading an image and then uploading audio that they've either already recorded (like a podcast) or generated using text-to-speech models like ElevenLabs.

"Both voice and video are seeing rapid evolution right now," Lingelbach said. "We took a big leap forward on naturalness of expression with our current model."

Hedra's platform is also users to integrate outside models like ElevenLabs, Google Veo, and Flux "all in one workflow," Lingelbach said.

Expanding beyond the creator economy

Hedra's core user base has been professional creators and marketers, Lingelbach said.

"We're already seeing a massive influx of AI-generated content," Lingelbach said. "My Instagram and TikTok feed are filled with various memes and also more serious content now that's AI-generated."

From comedy skits to faceless creator content to … talking babies, Hedra's already seen a wide range of use cases. Podcast content, particularly, has been a popular application of Hedra's tech.

"It's not really something that we anticipated initially, but it definitely has been driving a lot of our usage," he said.

In addition to the viral trend of AI baby-hosted podcasts that people have been creating using Hedra, others have used Hedra to create Studio Ghibli-style videos of the classic podcast interview clip.

With its recent raise, Hedra plans to expand into more enterprise marketing applications, expand its team, and open an office in New York City.

Read the pitch deck Hedra used to raise its Series A:

Note: Some slides have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.

Hedra is focused on storytelling and characters.

Here's what the slide says:

Every good story is crafted around characters.
But until now, creating compelling characters has been the most challenging part of content creation.

The deck explains Hedra's 'omnimodal foundation model' that lets people quickly generate digital characters.

Here's what the slide says:

At Hedra, we've built the world's best character performance model that uniquely combines video, voice, motion, and emotion in a way never before possible.

• Hedra's Character-3 model is the world's first omnimodal foundation model in production.
• The only model that supports human, animated, and animal characters. And it works with any angle or framing.
• Built to prioritize efficiently scaling unified models
• The entire model was developed with a budget of under $2 million

Hedra's customers range from everyday consumers to creators and marketers.

Here's what the slide says:

We've seen three key customer segments rely on Hedra for their various character performance needs.

Consumers

Consumers love the fun content they can create on Hedra — ranging from memes to music videos to short films.

Prosumers

Prosumers are using Hedra for use cases such as video podcasts, social media, and developing IP.

Marketing Teams

Marketing teams are using Hedra to create UGC, product tutorials, and other content to drive sales conversions.

Hedra has plans to expand into more enterprise offerings.

Here's what the slide says:

And we've already gotten heavy inbound interest from businesses for professional use and have signed notable early enterprise customers.

Upcoming Enterprise Features:

• Teams management
• IP Guards
• Enterprise-level security

The deck highlights Hedra's research team and its proprietary tech.

Here's what the slide says:

Hedra is poised to be the first company to shatter the "uncanny valley."

• We have a best-in-class research team that enables us to train proprietary omnimodal models that no competitor can develop
• We're a product focused company that builds foundation models for real world applications, listens to our users, and ships frequently.
• We're a capital efficient team that built Character-3 on under $2M in capital and a small research team.

Then the deck introduces the team.

Here's what the slide says:

We've assembled the best team to own this category — marrying deep research with AI-Native product design.

Key Leadership Team:

Michael Lingelbach: Founder / CEO

• Stanford PhD student of Fei-Fei Li and Jiajun Wu. Senior author of 3 real-time diffusion papers. Recipient of prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship.

Hongwei Yi: Head of Research

• Former PhD Student of Michael Black, principal researcher behind first audio to video diffusion model to hit the market in the US.

Wei Li: Research Lead

• Core contributor to Google Bard/Gemini, PaLM-2 and T5, with 8+ years experience at Google Brain/Deepmind.

Jason Wilson: Head of Engineering

• Previously led engineering at Nava Benefits (Thrive-backed Series B startup) and engineering manager at Descartes Labs.

Alan Guo: Chief of Staff

• MBA from Harvard Business School. Previously worked in growth & strategy at Disney, Jubilee Media, and Firework.

Ramin Keene: Principal Engineer

• Former CTO at StockX and two-time founder.

Hedra concludes its deck by saying 'we're just getting started.'

Here's what the slide says:

We're on a mission to build the world's best end-to-end storytelling platform. And we're just getting started.

• We've already built the world's leading character performance model on just a $2M budget.
• Prosumers, consumers, and enterprise marketers love and depend on us for their content.
• We're now working on even larger feature releases that will reinvent creation workflows.

It ends with a thank you slide.

This includes contact information for its CEO.

• Get ready for more AI tools shaping how you professionally network.
• As big platforms like LinkedIn launch more AI tools, a new wave of startups is cropping up.
• Startups like Series and Boardy have recently stirred buzz and raised millions in venture capital.

Can AI make professional networking more efficient and perhaps less … awkward?

Power players and startups alike are racing to implement AI features they say will take your networking to the next level.

This month, LinkedIn unveiled an AI-powered job search tool where users describe their dream role, as well as an AI coaching tool for paying users. These joined other AI tools that the Microsoft-owned platform introduced last year for finding new people to connect with and writing the first direct message to someone.

But while LinkedIn is betting artificial intelligence can enhance its dominance, some investors see an opportunity to disrupt the market leader.

"How can we use breakthrough technology to help people find and do their best work?" Obvious Ventures' James Joaquin said. "That sounds simple, but there's actually a lot of layers to that layer cake — there's job seeking, job searching, job matching."

Here are three opportunities in the professional networking space that investors told Business Insider they're watching:

1. Better matchmaking

AI can change how people search for professional connections, Anne Lee Skates, an investor, told BI. While generative AI improves the search experience, agentic AI will begin to automate that process, she added.

Skates led a $3.1 million pre-seed round of funding for Series that was announced in April. The startup connects users (primarily college students) over text messages with professional peers like prospective cofounders, mentors, or investors.

Another example is Boardy, a voice-powered AI service that introduces users over email. It has raised a total of $11 million since launching in October.

CEO Andrew D'Souza describes Boardy — the AI character users speak with over the phone — as an "AI super connector."

Voice AI tools, like Boardy's, are also of interest to investors like Andrew Yeung, who participated in Boardy's seed round earlier this year.

"I believe voice-first as input is the next big social platform," Yeung said.

2. Niche, verticalized job marketplaces

"There's an opportunity to find these vertical slices that don't fit well for a LinkedIn or an Indeed where a startup could actually build a network or a labor marketplace and better match employers and employees," Joaquin told BI.

His firm is an investor in Incredible Health, an AI-powered healthcare jobs marketplace.

"Healthcare is different," Joaquin said. "It's so specialized that it requires a different kind of professional network to match employers and employees."

3. More tools for career growth beyond networking

Joaquin also sees a role for AI in helping people develop professional skills that can influence their careers.

"How do people develop their careers through coaching, mentoring, and upskilling to move up that ladder?" he said.

Advancements in AI, specifically generative AI and large language models, provide startups with "a much richer dataset on user behavior, motivation, goals that we did not have before," Skates said.

Beyond professional networking, AI has broadly rekindled interest in consumer tech startups, particularly in how it can be used to better match people in dating or even friendship.

• Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified in Meta's antitrust trial on Thursday.
• The FTC claims Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created an illegal monopoly.
• Regulators want Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took the witness stand on Thursday in Meta's landmark antitrust trial in Washington, DC, federal court.

Mosseri, who has been at the helm of Instagram since 2018, is among the more than two dozen witnesses that the Federal Trade Commission has called to testify in the case.

The FTC argues in its case against Meta that the company violated antitrust laws when it "helped cement" an illegal monopoly in the social networking market with its acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and the messaging app WhatsApp two years later.

The case, to be decided by Judge James Boasberg, could be one of the most consequential antitrust trials in years. If FTC regulators have their way, Meta could be forced to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram.

Mosseri began his tenure at Meta, formerly called Facebook, in 2008. Here are five insights and revelations we learned from his more than six hours of testimony:

Mark Zuckerberg's 'strained' relationship with Instagram's founders

Mosseri recalled a 2018 email he sent to Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg while on paternity leave, warning that Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger were increasingly frustrated with strategy changes.

He wrote that it was "hard for me to get a read on what's going on as the relationship was strained."

Mosseri cited two core tensions: Zuckerberg's belief that slowing Instagram's growth would benefit Meta overall.

Mosseri acted as a mediator, relaying concerns between the founders and Facebook leadership.

These tensions foreshadowed a deeper rift that culminated in the cofounders' departure later that year, a turning point that saw Mosseri take over the reins at Instagram.

Worry over TikTok cutting into Instagram's growth

TikTok's meteoric rise was a massive threat to Instagram, Meta has argued.

"TikTok is probably the fiercest competition we have faced during my tenure at the company," Mosseri testified on Thursday.

According to internal Meta documents presented in court, TikTok was a "big concern" in 2019, just as the ByteDance-owned app was taking off. Instagram data scientists presented a "conservative estimate" that 40% of Instagram's year-over-year decline in time spent was due to TikTok. Specifically in the US, Instagram estimated a 23% decline in time spent.

Instagram would go on to launch its own short-form video product, Reels, in 2020.

Mosseri also testified that he briefed Zuckerberg "very often" about the competition with TikTok, adding that there was a monthly dinner with the most senior executives at Meta where this would come up.

"It became kind of a hazing ritual for me to give an update on Reels," Mosseri said.

Mosseri's 'biggest mistake'

On the stand, Mosseri testified that Instagram's first version of Reels was his "biggest mistake," built on the "not a sound foundation" of Stories, which the feature was initially built into.

The feature flopped and was ultimately scrapped after nearly a year. Mosseri said before he joined Instagram that it tried another venture to compete with TikTok called IGTV — that too failed.

Instagram pivoted by relaunching Reels as a dedicated feature in the main feed, a reboot that finally gained traction amid the pandemic and TikTok's rapid rise. Mosseri said that the company "could have and should have been more aggressive" in responding to what he called Meta's fiercest competitor.

Hundreds of millions on content creators

Instagram's fight with TikTok and other apps is just beginning, Mosseri testified.
Mosseri said that one of the biggest fights right now is over future creators, those who are just beginning to make content or who haven't even started. He said TikTok has done a better job allowing small creators to rapidly expand their reach, something Meta is actively trying to cut into.

In terms of overall investment, Mosseri said that Meta has spent "hundreds of millions, maybe a billion or two" during his time at the company supporting the wider creative ecosystem.

That touches everything from incentive payments to the physical infrastructure necessary to power Instagram's AI-backed recommendations.

"We are just seeing more and more power shift from institutions to individuals across the industry," Mosseri testified.

Instagram's struggles around content safety

Susan Musser, the FTC attorney who led Mosseri's questioning, repeatedly questioned the Instagram head over his initial concerns about how the app was ensuring the safety of its content.

Mosser pointed to an email from October 19, 2018, less than a month after Mosseri became head of the app, in which he said that Facebook was not investing enough in Instagram's Well-being team.

"I think we're underinvested in Well-being and were, until recently, the resources we do have are underleveraged," Mosseri wrote to someone whose full name was redacted. The initial email the person wrote was titled, "need to prioritize integrity efforts over growth — we must fight fakes."

An internal Facebook document also showed that Instagram had significantly fewer engineers devoted to well-being than the main app. According to the 2018 summary, Instagram had 40 engineers dedicated to doing such work. Facebook had 900.

Meta lawyer Aaron Panner later asked Mosseri if Meta employees typically received everything they requested.

"Never," Mosseri said.

• Instagram has been throwing cash at content creators for years.
• During the FTC v. Meta antitrust trial, Instagram's top exec, Adam Mosseri, revealed how much.
• Mosseri said Instagram has "invested hundreds of millions" into creators.

Instagram has spent big bucks on wooing content creators.

Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top executive, took the stand on Thursday to testify during the ongoing FTC antitrust trial against Meta. The FTC has accused Meta of acting as a monopoly in personal social networking with its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Mosseri testified that the company has "invested hundreds of millions, maybe a billion or two, over the course of my tenure" on creators.

Mosseri said the money included both incentives as well as the physical infrastructure that makes it possible for the app to expand a creator's reach.

In 2018, Mosseri took over as head of Instagram after the app's original cofounders stepped down from the company. Since then, creators have gradually become more and more of a core focus for the Meta-owned company.

Instagram has launched (and shut down) a handful of creator monetization programs since 2020 to compete with other platforms like YouTube and TikTok, which also pay creators. Some programs, like Instagram's "Bonuses," that pay creators for content like reels or photos, are limited and invite-only. Earlier this year, Meta had offered some creators between $2,500 to $50,000 a month to post content to Instagram.

"We believe creators are becoming more and more relevant over time," Mosseri said at another point during his testimony. "We are just seeing more and more power shift from institutions to individuals across the industry."

• Bumble reported a 7.7% year-over-year revenue drop in the first quarter of 2025.
• Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble's founder and newly returned CEO, explained how it got off track.
• Wolfe Herd said Bumble's prior focus on growth "came with a hidden cost."

Bumble's CEO knows you're not happy with dating apps.

The dating app company reported its first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, and Bumble's founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, was blunt about how the company's focus on growth "came with a hidden cost."

"What we learned is that just adding more profiles does not guarantee better matches," Wolfe Herd added. "In fact, it can lead to the opposite — more mismatches, more fake or low-quality profiles, and a frustrating experience. As mass quality dropped, some members got discouraged, found fewer successful matches and dates, and fewer people recommended the app to others."

Wolfe Herd also said Bumble's pivot from word-of-mouth marketing to performance channels hurt the app's user experience.

Bumble — and many other dating apps — saw rapid growth during the pandemic. Riding the wave, Bumble had its IPO in 2021. Since hitting its all-time high in February 2021, however, the company's stock price has dropped by more than 90%.

In January 2024, Wolfe Herd stepped down as CEO, and that February, the company laid off hundreds of staffers (about 30% of the company) ahead of a relaunch of the app. Wolfe Herd returned to Bumble as CEO this March.

The company reported a 7.7% decline in total revenue for the first quarter, decreasing from $267 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $247 million in the same period in 2025. Bumble app revenue also dropped 6.5%.

But Wolfe Herd said she has a plan to get Bumble back on track.

In addition to pulling back performance marketing spend, she said the company would double down on removing "bad intention members that have degraded match quality and member trust," while also building out more technology like a "personalized matching algorithm" using AI.

Bumble's not the only dating app company looking for new lanes. As dating app giants face headwinds, a slew of new startups have emerged. Some have attracted the attention of both users and investors, particularly with new AI-powered features like matchmaking.

Meanwhile, Bumble's primary competition, Match Group — which owns Tinder and Hinge — announced Thursday that it's planning to lay off 13% of its staff, and also reported a 3% year-over-year revenue decline in the first quarter. The company said this was driven by a 5% decline in paying users.

Match's new CEO, Spencer Rascoff, also discussed the challenges dating apps are facing.

"The category challenges have been due primarily to a lack of innovation and our failure to recognize and respond to changes in the younger demographic, especially Gen Z and what they want," he said.

• Instagram is in its sharing era.
• Doing Things, a meme-focused media firm, is crafting videos to drive sharing in group chats and DMs.
• Making videos shareable is all about focusing on "universal truths," creative lead Sam Graviet said.

Instagram creators don't just want your likes. They need you to DM their posts to your friends.

Doing Things, the company that runs accounts like Overheard and Recess Therapy, is trying to tailor its videos so that Instagram users share them.

"Likes are awesome. Saves are great. Comments are amazing for reaching your followers," Sam Graviet, Doing Things' vice president of creative, told Business Insider. "But if you really want that algorithm boost … you need to be able to master what a share is."

The strategy shift stems from the top. Meta executives like head of Instagram Adam Mosseri have made it clear that "shares" — when a user sends a post elsewhere, such as to DMs or stories — is one of the top signals Instagram uses to rank content in the app.

"When you're creating content, think about creating something that people would want to send to a friend," Mosseri said in a 2024 Instagram post.

Why do DMs suddenly matter more? It's partly because that's how users actually interact with each other on Meta's apps.

"It used to be that you interacted with the people that you were connecting with in feed," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Stratechery's Ben Thompson. But today, "the real social interaction comes from you finding something interesting and putting it in a group chat with friends or a one-on-one chat," Zuckerberg added.

Mosseri said at the beginning of the year that Instagram would be "doubling down" on messaging, adding more than 20 new updates to DMs between March 2024 and 2025.

Meta even positioned Instagram as "more of a messaging app than a broadcast-sharing app," in a statement attributed to Mosseri in Meta's opening presentation during the ongoing Federal Trade Commission antitrust trial against the company.

For Instagram creators, the direction is clear: make videos that people can't help but pass around.

Making shareable content

So, how do content creators make their videos more shareable and gain access to private spaces like the family group chat?

It's all about making content that's widely relatable, Graviet said.

Sometimes Doing Things uses a prompt like "What's your biggest pet peeve?" or "What's the thing about your family that annoys you the most?" as a tool to try to make videos that could resonate with a large population and spark an emotional reaction that drives sharing.

"It's finding those shared universal truths that we all have and then developing the content around that," he said.

One example could be a video poking fun at a trope that dads are obsessed with lawn care (the company has an account dedicated to dad humor). Workplace jokes are also popular on Doing Things' meme accounts like Middle Class Fancy.

The company puts the most shareable moment of a video in its first few seconds.

"It is like a hook to get you to watch the whole video," Graviet said. "That's just the part that spurs that connection with somebody else that you have, that lands the video in their inbox."

Doing Things may be uniquely positioned to pull off relatable content. Much of its portfolio is meme accounts that lean into observational humor, such as its city-specific accounts like Overheard New York or its animal feeds like Doggos Doing Things. The company, which raised a $21.5 million Series A round in 2022, has tens of millions of followers across platforms on its over 40 different accounts.

Graviet said Instagram is its top focus. Being an Instagram-first media company in 2025 means focusing on sharing.

"Sharing is such a huge part of the platform now, it's kind of always on your mind," Graviet said.

• Creator upstart Spotter let go of staffers this week, the company confirmed to BI.
• The company works with top YouTubers and has a mix of businesses, including content licensing.
• Read the email Spotter's CEO sent staffers announcing the cuts.

Spotter, a startup that works with some of YouTube's biggest stars, laid off staff this week, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

BI was unable to determine the exact number of employees affected, but the layoffs impacted teams across the company.

"As the macroeconomic environment continues to evolve, we've made the difficult but strategic decision to implement organizational changes, including a reduction in the size of our team," a spokesperson for Spotter told BI.

The spokesperson said the cuts will help "accelerate our path to profitability by the end of this year."

Spotter is a major player in the creator space. Last year, it attracted funding from Amazon as part of a larger deal to work with Spotter's creator partners. The company's talent pool includes MrBeast, Dude Perfect, and Ryan Trahan. Spotter, which was founded in 2019 and is also backed by SoftBank, built a business buying the rights to license creator content. In March, the company said it had paid out over $950 million to creators.

That month, Spotter hosted a splashy pitch event in New York for creators and advertisers. The company said this week's layoffs did not impact Spotter's advertising sales team.

The cuts mark Spotter's second round of layoffs in the last six months. The company laid off employees in November, a spokesperson previously told The Information.

Spotter is not the only creator content licensing startup to cull staff in the past year. Jellysmack, a competitor that shares Softbank as an investor, made cuts in October amid a restructuring. Some startups focused on creator services have failed to meet growth expectations, industry investors previously told BI.

Spotter also offers AI-powered products to help creators come up with video ideas, titles, and thumbnails. It runs an advertising business connecting brands with creators as well.

Read the email Spotter's CEO Aaron DeBevoise sent to employees this week announcing the job cuts:

Team,

Today, we've made the difficult decision to part ways with some of our teammates. I understand today is challenging - particularly for those impacted.

These changes were thoroughly considered, particularly given recent economic uncertainty and volatility, which have further impacted investors' demand for efficiency and profitability. Despite our success in Q1, it has become clear that in light of the economic environment, we must make targeted changes to accelerate our path to profitability and control our own destiny.

To our impacted teammates: We are so thankful for your contributions which have been critical to advancing our mission to help Creators win.

We have already sent calendar invites to all impacted employees for conversations today where you will learn about next steps. We are committed to supporting these team members as they transition to their next opportunities.

Thank you.

Aaron

• A judge dealt Apple a potential blow in its ongoing legal battle over App Store fees.
• Patreon and other players across the subscription creator economy are cheering it as a win.
• One exec called the court ruling "a shift toward a more equitable digital marketplace for creators."

Apple was issued a potentially crushing setback in its ongoing legal battle over App Store fees — but players across the subscription creator economy are cheering it as a win.

"This is a huge moment for creators and their businesses," a Patreon spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. "The iOS app is the No. 1 platform for fan engagement on Patreon, and we believe this ruling allows creators to get paid without giving Apple 30%."

Patreon is a platform where creators can build subscription businesses and charge fans for paywalled content, such as podcasts or videos, and other perks.

A judge on Wednesday found Apple had violated a 2021 injunction in its legal fight with Epic Games. The dispute started over the 30% fee Apple collects on in-app purchases.

The 2021 injunction largely favored Apple, but it said the company needed to let developers inform users in their apps about purchase options outside the Apple App Store. Wednesday's ruling said the company failed to do that. It also said Apple violated the court's order by charging a 27% fee when links guide users to off-app purchases.

An Apple spokesperson previously told BI that the company "strongly" disagrees with the court's decision and plans to both comply and appeal — a sentiment echoed by CEO Tim Cook on the company's earnings call. Apple did not respond to a request for further comment.

Apps that help creators make money from subscriptions, like Patreon, Passes, Kajabi, and Mighty Networks, rejoiced at the changes. If more subscriptions are transacted outside Apple's ecosystem, it could mean more money for creators and platforms alike.

Patreon said it's submitting an app update for review that will enable payment options outside of in-app purchases so creators can keep more money.

Last year, the company said it was removing all other billing systems from its iOS app, and advised creators that they could either raise their in-app prices to cover Apple's fees or eat the fees themselves. Subscribers could also avoid the fees by signing up on Patreon's website.

While "the dust has yet to settle," given Apple's plans to appeal, "this is a good day for creative people," Patreon CEO Jack Conte said on Instagram.

Passes founder and CEO Lucy Guo told BI in a statement that "companies have had to charge more to creators because of these commissions, so this will put more money in creators' pockets."

Mighty Networks CEO Gina Bianchini said, "We are celebrating over here at Mighty Networks."

'A more equitable digital marketplace for creators'

The ruling could threaten Apple's App Store revenue, which is a major money maker for the company.

Last quarter, the company's services business, which includes its App Store, accounted for $26.6 billion in net sales.

While it's unclear how many prospective subscribers will forego the convenience of in-app purchases, Kajabi CEO Ahad Khan said the ruling points to a shift toward more creator ownership.

"Creators have long relied on social platforms and tech giants to earn money, and it cuts into their earnings and even limits how they engage with their audiences," he told BI. "This ruling is another proof point of this shift toward a more equitable digital marketplace for creators."

• Meta launched a new stand-alone app for its AI tools.
• In addition to AI assistant tools, the Meta AI app also has a social feed and links to Instagram.
• Meta onboarded creators to the AI app leading up to its launch.

Meta's newest app has been tapping content creators to help it take off.

The company unveiled a stand-alone Meta AI app on Tuesday, coinciding with LlamaCon, its first AI developer event.

"There's almost a billion people who are using Meta AI across our apps now," Mark Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the new app.

Meta AI's app gives users access to an AI assistant, similar to other AI apps like OpenAI's ChatGPT app. Meta's main pitch to users is that its new AI assistant app, which is built on Meta's latest Llama 4 model, "gets to know" users' preferences, remembers context, and is personalized. It's also a companion app for Meta's AI-powered Ray-Ban glasses.

One thing that sets it apart from ChatGPT and other AI competitors: The new app has a social feed where users can share what they are prompting Meta's AI with.

Ahead of the app's arrival, Meta onboarded creators so the feed wasn't a content desert and also sought their feedback. The day of its launch, Meta AI's "Discover" feed was already filled with AI prompts from Meta employees, as well as content creators like travel bloggers, meme makers, tech enthusiasts, and artists.

Meta's creator partnership teams reached out to influencers over the last few weeks to onboard them to the new app, multiple creators and talent managers told Business Insider. These content creators got early access to Meta AI last week, but said they were not paid by Meta to use the app.

How creators are using Meta AI

Day one of Meta AI's feed included a mix of prompts shared by creators. Some shared images the AI generated, such as versions of themselves with different colored eyes. Others shared text prompts like "100 men vs 1 gorilla, who will win?" posted by the meme page Hoodville (which has 9 million Instagram followers).

Users can choose what prompts they share publicly.

"It's not just going to be every thought that I have, it's going to be really curated," meme creator Vanessa Vice said. One of her first public prompts was asking Meta AI to "imagine the average John Mayer fan," which then spit out images of John Mayer wearing John Mayer merch.

"The app's Discover feed is like a version of the OG Facebook Feed but only focused on AI use cases," said Mike Proulx, a VP at Forrester Research.

Meta AI's social features are limited, though.

While users can like posts, reply to other people's AI prompts, and share posts to other apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads, Meta AI isn't a full-fledged social media platform yet. For instance, there is currently no way to follow any profiles on the app, although some creators have their Instagram pages linked to their Meta AI profiles. There also isn't a way to search for creators or public accounts.

"It's not necessarily about building a following on there," said Andrew Wille, a photographer who got early access to Meta AI. Instead, Wille said he's using the public feed to "learn how to best prompt Meta AI."

The educational component is a core part of the Meta AI app feed.

"You can post any of your prompts to inspire others and help them learn," the app tells users.

Despite the limitations right now, some think AI prompts could become a new form of content for creators.

"I want to see how other people write prompts, and I'm sure other people want to see the type of prompts that I write," said Sundas Khalid, a tech content creator and data scientist. "LLMs are only as good as the prompts that we're writing."

• Meta launched its text platform Threads as a stand-alone app in 2023.
• Leading up to its launch, Meta created a deck to detail the app's potential and strategy.
• The deck was used as evidence in the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta.

An internal Meta deck reveals the company's original plans for its text-based platform Threads, and how it would compete with X, formerly Twitter.

The deck was revealed in court this month during the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust trial against Meta.

Meta officially launched Threads in 2023, and 10 million users signed up in its first seven hours, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

Internally, Meta employees pitched Threads as a better Twitter.

"Twitter is experiencing instability and may continue to falter, though its network is strong and established," the deck said.

Threads' initial goal was to "build the most engaging online space for public conversation, enabling people to talk about their interests, come together over cultural moments, and connect directly with creators," according to the deck.

The launch strategy for Threads, code-named Project 92, or P92, included:

• Using what Meta has learned about social media from its other platforms to create a foundation for users, including sharing best practices for using the platform with users on day one.
• Using Instagram as a funnel to direct users to sign up. At its launch, users could sign into Threads with their existing Instagram logins.
• Introducing innovative features like a Mastodon integration and other tools that could make posting "fresh and fun."
• Targeting Instagram creators to create conversation that's less news and politics-focused content than what can already be found on X.

For the most part, the plans outlined in the deck came true. Features like archiving posts and joining the decentralized fediverse came in 2024.

But one feature from this Threads deck that still hasn't arrived? DMs.

The deck includes product imagery of a native-to-Threads direct messaging feature. Meta has not added a DM inbox to the Threads app, and instead, redirects users to Instagram DMs.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Read the deck below. Some slides have been redacted:

• Sitch, an AI matchmaking app, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by A16z Speedrun.
• The startup launched in New York City in November and has plans to expand to other US cities.
• It's also rolling out voice-based AI tools, a buzzy topic in the tech industry.

AI is fueling renewed interest in consumer tech, including online dating.

Sitch, a matchmaking app that uses AI to connect singles, raised a $2 million pre-seed investment, the startup revealed exclusively to Business Insider. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz's startup accelerator, A16z Speedrun, and includes the angel round Sitch raised in 2024 from investors like Jeremy Liew, who wrote Snapchat's first check.

Fresh out of Speedrun's most recent cohort, Sitch cofounders Nandini Mullaji and Chad DePue are hiring full-time engineering and growth staff, planning to expand to new cities, and introducing voice-based AI.

While many dating app users feel burned out by constant swiping and rampant ghosting, and dating industry giants like Tinder and Bumble face headwinds, new startups like Sitch are trying to shake up the dating app experience.

"We understand people have been burned in the past," Mullaji told BI. "We are coming in and saying, 'Hey, we have a business model shift and we have a total platform shift.'"

The platform shift? AI.

Sitch's AI matchmaker chatbot — built using OpenAI — is trained on the hundreds of real-life introductions Mullaji has made as a part-time matchmaker.

Mullaji sees AI as a way to "democratize" the matchmaking experience (which can cost individuals thousands of dollars) and bring it "to the masses."

When signing up for Sitch, users answer a slew of questions about their dating priorities, values, and backgrounds, which Sitch uses to create a profile and curate potential matches. It presents users with a maximum of five potential "setups" each week. Users have to pay up front to access the setup features. Sitch offers three tiers of packages: $90 (for three setups), $125 (for five), and $160 (for eight).

Once Sitch's AI matchmaker presents users with someone it deems may be a good fit, users can ask the chatbot questions about the other person, and the AI responds using information from their respective profiles. If both parties are interested in meeting, the AI introduces the two in a group chat. However, if an introduction occurs and you get ghosted, Mullaji said you'll be refunded.

Sitch manually reviews new user applications, which Mullaji said is the "one part of our process that's still completely human-driven," as a quality control and safety measure while the platform grows.

AI in dating is still nascent. Other early-stage startups, like Gigi or Amori, use AI to coach singles and help curate matches. Meanwhile, larger dating apps like Tinder and Grindr have introduced AI wingman features.

Can AI make dating feel more … human?

"This is not about building AI girlfriends or trying to replace human contact and connection with AI," Mullaji said. Instead, she thinks AI can be used to help better connect people.

To give Sitch users a more "human-like experience," it is introducing voice-based AI features, Mullaji said.

Starting this week, Sitch is rolling out a voice-based AI onboarding experience for new users as the app plans to expand into more US cities. Mullaji said San Francisco and Los Angeles will be added in May, and Chicago and Washington, D.C. will quickly follow. Users will otherwise be added to Sitch's waitlist, and if a particular US city reaches "critical mass," which Mullaji defined as between 2,000 and 4,000, Sitch will begin to admit users.

When new users call the number listed on Sitch's website or in its app, they chat with an AI version of Mullaji who walks them through onboarding questions.

It will also soon expand its voice AI tools to current app users. Instead of texting the AI matchmaking agent on the Sitch app, users will be able to talk to it on the phone with feedback about setups.

Voice AI tech has become a hot category among venture capitalists. In 2024, voice AI startups raised over $398 million from VCs, according to PitchBook data.

Sitch is using ElevenLabs, a voice cloning AI startup that announced a $180 million Series C round with a $3.3 billion valuation in January, to clone Mullaji's voice.

"We spent a lot of time recording and re-recording my voice to see how we could actually have it sound human," Mullaji said. "The one thing you do not want this to feel like is a customer support bot."

• One category of creator merch is feeling the pinch of Trump's tariffs more than others: plushies.
• Some merch companies are seeking to transition their plushies business away from China.
• Creators are worried they could upset their fans if they have to raise prices.

Rachel Reichenbach is stressed out about tariffs.

The artist and content creator sells frog pins, plush toys, and other amphibian-themed items to fans.

Her plushies are made in China, which means they could soon become much more expensive to sell in the US due to recent tariffs and rule changes instituted by the Trump administration. If she raises the cost of her green and blue plush frogs to cover tariff fees, they may become too pricey for her audience.

"No matter how cute they are, people are only going to be willing to pay a certain amount for things," said Reichenbach, who has around 117,000 Instagram followers and 670 Patreon subscribers. "My products, they're not a staple. It's going to be the first to be cut from most people's budget."

The US-China trade war is hitting the influencer economy unevenly. Influencers sell a variety of items to make money off their fame, whether that's sweatpants, keychains, or chocolate bars. Some products, like T-shirts or food, can be easily manufactured in the US, which could shield them from tariffs. Plushies, however, tend to be made in China, where tariffs on toy imports are now set at 145%.

The increase hasn't hit for some creators yet, but they're bracing for higher costs.

Plushies can sell for anywhere from $15 to upward of $30, several creators and suppliers told Business Insider. Creators are worried they could upset fans if added fees force them to raise prices. The market for influencer plushies, popular among anime illustrators, YouTube channels with animated characters, and VTubers, could crash in the coming months if creators back away from selling stuffed toys in favor of lower-tariffed items.

"For some creators, plushies are far and away the bestseller," said Walker Williams, cofounder at the creator e-commerce platform Fourthwall. "They're really collectible, they're fun, they're unique, and so for a good number of creators, plushies are 90% plus of their sales."

Warren James CEO Saurabh Shah told BI that plushie sales are a "close second" to apparel for the creator merch company, which works with creators like Hasan Piker and Tana Mongeau.

Why finding plushies outside China is challenging

Influencers and their business partners lean heavily on China for plushies because of the country's manufacturing efficiencies, executives at creator merch companies told BI.

China became a plushies hub because its factories are colocated and can easily work together, said Ronak Trivedi, CEO of the product manufacturing platform Pietra. He said cities like Dongguan and Yiwu have "extremely robust economies around plushie production."

There are other places for plush toy manufacturing outside China, including Vietnam. Companies make plushies in the US and Australia, for example, but they can be expensive due to labor costs. Factories outside China or Vietnam are also less equipped to work with influencers on small batch orders, and creators tend to release products in limited drops.

"If you don't want to produce 20,000 of them, basically you have to go to China or Vietnam," Williams said.

Being price conscious is a must for influencers who want to avoid upsetting fans

Some creators are worried about setting high prices on plushies because they think it will come off as greedy to their fans.

"When things are crazy in the world, I think creators are a little more reluctant to go and sell something directly to their fans," Williams said. "They don't want to put their audience under pressure to buy things."

Warren James is raising prices — to the tune of less than 10% across most categories — meaning a $35 plushie would now be about $38, Shah said. The company and creators are also eating some of the costs, as are its suppliers and shipping partners.

"We're being surgical about it," he said of the increases. "For us, merch is about fan connection — it should still feel accessible."

Other merch companies like anime creator product company Noir are anticipating much steeper price increases tied to tariffs that could more than double the cost of plushies for their customers.

Noir isn't shying away from letting customers know why prices are going up. The company plans to list price increases for plushies as a Trump tariff fee in the checkout cart.

Other creators have been shouting out potential price hikes in posts on platforms like Instagram and X.

"Transparency is really important for the fans to feel like they know why we're doing what we're doing," Cary Huang from the YouTube channel Jack n Jellify told BI.

Influencers and their partners are racing to find workarounds

The plushie price apocalypse hasn't fully hit. Some creators are still benefiting from the de minimis loophole that exempts from tariffs smaller orders shipped from China. But the administration is stripping that exemption away beginning on May 2.

Still, influencers and their suppliers aren't sitting idle. Some are rushing to get as many shipments into the US as possible before the exemption is removed. Others are considering sourcing their plushies from Vietnam if Chinese suppliers become unviable.

Shah said Warren James began exploring factories there across all categories after the Biden administration signaled tariff increases last year, and it's now doing test production runs. It is modeling plans to bring about half of its business in China to Vietnam.

Other merch companies are thinking on their feet.

Killer Merch COO Mark Bubb said more partnerships could help more players in the relatively nascent space succeed. One example could include various entities coming together "to give a decent amount of business to a small manufacturer that would help them scale."

Other creators may eventually move away from plushies if they become too expensive to produce.

"I do think that creators are going to go for products that are more made in the USA," Williams said. "A lot of creators are going to say, 'Hey, I'm not looking to pay 2.5 times the price on a plushie.'"

Oliver Gilpin, CEO of Telos Media, which runs animated YouTube channels like Solarballs and MrSpherical, said the company may prioritize playing cards over plushies because it has a smaller price markup on its plush toys.

"With tariffs starting, it really hits low markup businesses and products," Gilpin said.

Of course, abandoning plushies isn't an option for everyone.

"The type of product really matters," Jack n Jellify's Huang said. "You can't just swap out a plushie for a jigsaw puzzle."

• Instagram and Facebook have a bit of a sibling rivalry that Mark Zuckerberg had to navigate.
• Emails and other documents from Meta reveal how Instagram started to "cannibalize" Facebook.
• The documents are part of the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta.

Every family has some drama, and Meta's has been coming to light through the release of court documents in recent days.

In particular, a sibling-like rivalry between Instagram and Facebook was brewing for years — and vexed Mark Zuckerberg.

Meta is in the middle of an antitrust trial brought by the FTC, which aims to break up the social media giant. Facebook's $1 billion 2012 acquisition of Instagram plays a large role in the FTC's case. The FTC argues that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated US competition law.

Internal emails and other documents from 2018 to 2022 reveal how Instagram and Facebook struggled to coexist.

In emails, Zuckerberg expressed concerns that the photo-sharing app had begun to "cannibalize" the Facebook app.

From Zuckerberg's POV, Facebook was driving Instagram's growth at the cost of engagement and its own relevance, and it was time for Instagram to return the favor.

That said, he also emphasized that he wanted Instagram to "keep growing, even understanding it will naturally cannibalize FB somewhat."

It was clearly a tricky situation for Zuckerberg to navigate.

"Out-of-context and years-old documents about acquisitions that were reviewed by the FTC more than a decade ago will not obscure the realities of the competition we face or overcome the FTC's weak case," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.

Zuck's big regret

Several documents from 2018 show a recurring topic of concern: Instagram overshadowing Facebook.

"The Facebook app has historically driven most of Instagram's growth through bookmarks and other links, and has born a higher ad load tax," Zuckerberg said in a letter to board members in 2018. "This has contributed to a headwind for Facebook in that it sends some of its engagement to Instagram."

In May 2018, Zuckerberg wrote to several Facebook executives in an email that "one of the major mistakes I regret is not reducing the massive inorganic distribution to Instagram sooner."

"If we had stopped aggressively promoting Instagram at 500 million people, for example it would have had sufficient scale to build and compete on Stories and we would not have the same concern about network fragmentation that we have today," he said.

In the same email, Zuckerberg posed the question: Is Instagram "just a better product" than Facebook? Zuck didn't think so.

"All of our metrics suggests that Instagram is a good but overall less effective product, and is likely only growing so quickly because we promoted it heavily," Zuckerberg said.

Instagram had become the cooler, younger sibling

Facebook, meanwhile, needed to maintain relevance among its users as Instagram grew.

"When you get an Amazon Echo and start using it after you already use Amazon for commerce, you feel like Amazon is getting more relevant in your life," Zuckerberg said in the May 2018 email to executives. "However, when you get Instagram and start using that in addition to Facebook you feel like Facebook as a company is getting less relevant in your life."

Zuckerberg saw two options for improving Facebook's relevance at the time: double down on Facebook's branding when users opened Instagram and WhatsApp, or change the corporate brand entirely.

It did both.

In 2019, it introduced an "Instagram from Facebook" tagline. Then, in 2021, Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta Platforms.

Fast forward to 2022, and Facebook's relevance in users' lives was still a struggle.

"Right now IG is doing well on cultural relevance and FB isn't, so I'm more focused on figuring out a reasonable path for FB longer term," Zuckerberg said in an email to head of Facebook Tom Alison.

Trying to reel in Instagram

Throughout 2018, Zuckerberg discussed several options that could help preserve Facebook's cultural relevance and growth amid Instagram's "cannibalization."

Here are a few that were discussed in the court documents:

1. Promoting Instagram less. "Given our concern about these effects, we have reduced our promotions from Facebook to Instagram," Zuckerberg wrote to executives in May 2018. "These remain significant levers for changing the trajectory of the future growth of the family, and as painful as it would be to reduce Instagram growth and revenue forecasts — and manage the team through this — it is rational to pull these levers to effectively zero until we reach a reasonable balance."
2. Reducing Facebook's ad load. "There's absolutely no reason why IG ad load should be lower than FB at a time when … we're having engagement issues in FB," Zuckerberg said in a January 2018 email thread with executives. "If we were managing our company correctly, then at a minimum we'd immediately balance IG and FB ad load — this week or this month, not this year."
3. Spinning out Instagram was even floated as an option. Zuckerberg wondered if Facebook "should consider the extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company," per the May 2018 email to executives. "I understand the business value of having Instagram and Facebook together, so I don't raise this lightly," he said.
4. Changing up internal leadership with a reorg. In 2018, there was a shake-up across the company. Chris Cox was appointed to oversee product across the "family" of apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger — and Adam Mosseri was moved from Facebook to Instagram as VP of product. "The reason we're trying a new org structure is because the status quo isn't working," Zuckerberg said. "Our apps are neither operating independently nor with a rational value exchange today. Instead, we are siphoning off the network from the Facebook app to artificially grow Instagram and Messenger."
5. Differentiating Instagram and Facebook. Zuckerberg wanted Instagram to focus more on public figures (like influencers) and video, and think about competing more seriously with YouTube, according to a 2018 exchange between him and Mosseri. Four years later, Zuckerberg would have a similar conversation with Alison. "Differentiating between IG and FB is important, but I think we need to find a strategy that doesn't leave one service picking up the scraps the other service leaves behind or having either service artificially or unreasonably constrain itself," Zuckerberg wrote to Alison in a 2022 email thread.

The drama wasn't just between the apps

The court documents also shed light on the mounting tension between Zuckerberg and Instagram's cofounders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, in the months before their ultimate departure from Facebook.

Zuckerberg's May 2018 email to executives reveals concerns around retaining Systrom and Kreiger at Facebook.

"Within our current discussion framework where we have to tread very carefully when discussing any possible downsides of promoting Instagram, I'm not sure how we'll even articulate the decisions I'm suggesting here to Kevin," Zuckerberg said.

Later in the email, Zuckerberg describes Systrom as "an excellent product leader who has built something massively successful" and a "good team player."

"But by the very fact of him pushing so hard for what he believes is right and our desire to retain him, we compromise more than we would for almost any other leader, and over time those compromises compound to creating a large imbalance in the value flows between the apps," Zuckerberg said.

A few months later, Mosseri and Zuckerberg also discussed Systrom.

"I caught up with Kevin briefly last night but it's hard for me to get a read on what's going on as the relationship is strained," Mosseri said in a June 2018 email to Zuckerberg about shifting Instagram's priorities. In August, Mosseri told Zuckerberg that Systrom and Krieger "seem to be struggling with all of this."

That September, both Systrom and Krieger stepped down from Instagram, with Mosseri taking over as head of Instagram.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at @sydneykbradley.123. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Facebook's cultural relevance has been on the rocks for years.
• Emails between Mark Zuckerberg and a Facebook exec reveal Meta's concerns about the social network.
• The emails were used as evidence in the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg has been worried about Facebook's cultural relevance for years.

Emails from April 2022 between Zuckerberg and Tom Alison — Meta's head of Facebook — were presented in court this week during the FTC's antitrust trial against Meta.

The main topic of the email exchange: How to keep Facebook relevant.

"Even though the FB app's engagement is steady in many places, it feels like its cultural relevance is decreasing quickly and I worry that this may be a leading indicator of future health issues," Zuckerberg wrote.

He added that even if Instagram and WhatsApp did well, he didn't see a path to success for Meta if Facebook faltered.

Just months before these emails, Facebook had widely rolled out reels, its short-form video product resembling TikTok. While Zuckerberg said in the emails that he agreed with Facebook's recent shift of resources to reels, he wanted to "make sure we have a unique vision" for the Facebook app.

So, what was going wrong on Facebook, then?

According to the emails, here's what was affecting Facebook's cultural relevance at the time:

1. Facebook's classic act of "friending" someone seemed to have lost its luster. "First, a lot of people's friend graphs are stale and not filled with the people they want to hear from or connect with," Zuckerberg wrote, adding that the act of friending someone also felt too "heavyweight" for users. "Do you want to be seen as someone adding friends on FB, or would you rather be seen adding the person on IG?" In the same exchange, Zuckerberg presented three options to Alison that could help Facebook's relevancy, including one "crazy idea" of wiping people's friend graphs and having them start from scratch.
2. People were turning to other platforms, like Instagram, to follow friends and public figures. Zuckerberg himself even admitted that he was more likely to follow surfers or MMA fighters on Instagram or Twitter. "Every other modern social network is built on following rather than friending, so it seems possible that the FB app is just outdated because it never adopted this fundamental innovation," Zuckerberg said.
3. Facebook's attempt to focus on communities with groups still needed work. "I'm optimistic about community messaging, but after running at groups in FB for several years, I'm not sure how much further we'll be able to push this," Zuckerberg wrote. "It's possible groups will just never be as big as friending/following, and that a lot of group behavior is moving to messaging anyway."
4. Its push into short-form video needed to feel more social, and also unique to Facebook. Zuckerberg said that while Facebook's push of reels was good for surfacing interesting content in the feed, "it reduces the social sense of feeling connected to the person creating the content," especially if it wasn't made on Facebook. Alison responded to Zuckerberg in one email that the "problem with Facebook is that we don't have a culturally relevant public content ecosystem as a baseline since it's mainly comprised of commoditized news and video publisher content."
5. Facebook has a litany of competitors — even its own sibling, Instagram. TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit all came up in the exchange. Smaller social apps were also referenced, like friend-sharing apps BeReal and Poparazzi. But one of the most interesting competitors was Instagram, especially since its acquisition by Facebook is core to the FTC's case against Meta. (It appears that Instagram's top exec, Adam Mosseri, was cc'd on these emails.) "Differentiating between IG and FB is important, but I think we need to find a strategy that doesn't leave one service picking up the scraps the other service leaves behind or having either service artificially or unreasonably constrain itself," Zuckerberg wrote. "Right now IG is doing well on cultural relevance and FB isn't, so I'm more focused on figuring out a reasonable path for FB longer term." Nothing like a little sibling rivalry.

• New social-networking and dating startups are coming onto the scene.
• VCs and angel investors are funding some of these promising startups.
• Here are the pitch decks nine startups used while raising Series A and seed rounds.

A new generation of consumer social startups is emerging.

From social networks focused on getting people to meet IRL to dating apps taking on Tinder or Hinge, startups are disrupting the digital social scene.

Founders of these startups are tackling problems like loneliness, dating app fatigue, and general dissatisfaction with the current social-media incumbents.

Meet the founders behind 18 new social startups

Some founders come from Big Tech backgrounds, like the Instagram-heavy team behind photo-sharing app Retro, or the ex-Google employees building the social-mapping app PamPam. Meanwhile, Gen Z founders are also throwing their hats in the ring, like Isabella Epstein's IRL-focused app Kndrd or Tiffany "TZ" Zhong's Noplace app.

Investors are taking notice.

For instance, the IRL-social app 222, which matches strangers over dinner or activities with a personality quiz, raised a $2.5 million seed round from venture capital firms like 1517 Fund, General Catalyst, and Best Nights VC in 2024.

Then there's Series, a professional networking AI chatbot for college students, which announced a $3.1 million pre-seed in April.

"We're entering this new wave of social where people are trying to revert back to what people really use these platforms for to begin with — which is connection," Maitree Mervana Parekh, a principal at Acrew Capital, told Business Insider last year.

Some funds — like French firm Intuition VC — have made tackling loneliness part of their investment theses.

Dating apps are also "very disruptable in this moment," Daybreak Ventures founder Rex Woodbury told Business Insider.

Meet the founders of 11 startups competing with dating app giants like Tinder

Other startups, like Diem and Spill, have opened up investment rounds to include users themselves using the platform Wefunder.

It's not yet clear how many of these investments will pan out. Some startups are pre-revenue, while others are experimenting with monetization methods (such as freemium models).

"Founders have to be honest with themselves," said Marlon Nichols, a founding partner at Mac Venture Capital. "Some of them aren't really venture-scale or venture-type investments. We're looking for the next big thing, the next category leader."

Meet 12 VCs and investors eyeing new social startups

BI spoke with several social-media and dating app founders about how they are raising capital — including the pitch decks they used to raise millions of dollars.

Read the pitch decks that helped 9 social-networking and dating startups raise millions of dollars:

Note: Pitch decks are sorted by investment stage and size of round.

Series A

• Posh, an event-based social network based in New York City: $22 million Series A (12 pages)
• Spoon Radio, a social-audio startup: $17 million Series A (15 pages)
• Pie, an IRL social startup founded by Bonobos' Andy Dunn: $11.5 million Series A (31 pages)
• Howbout, a social-calendar app to help people make plans with friends: $8 million (12 pages)

Seed

• Hangout, a social music platform: $8.2 million Seed (26 pages)
• First Round's On Me, a dating app that prioritizes making plans over swiping and DMs: $3 million seed (16 pages)
• Seam Social, a Web3-inspired social network that lets users make mini-apps: $2.5 million (10 pages)

Pre-Seed

• Series, an AI professional network for college students: $3.1 million pre-seed (10 pages)

Other

• Rodeo, a social shopping platform, shared the pitch deck it used to get accepted into an A16z startup accelerator (11 pages)

• Instagram saw a big spike in usage in the hours that TikTok went dark.
• That spike was illustrated as part of Meta's opening statement during its FTC antitrust trial.
• Here's the chart Meta shared in court.

Instagram stands to gain a lot if TikTok is banned.

A chart featured in Meta's opening statement during its FTC antitrust trial showed just how much Instagram could benefit.

The Meta-owned platform reported a spike in usage when TikTok went dark for roughly 14 hours in January.

"People went to Instagram," Meta's lawyer, Matt Hansen, said this week while pointing to the chart. "Boom almost instantly."

Specifically, Instagram saw a spike in hourly time spent when TikTok was unavailable in the US. After TikTok returned, the hourly time spent on Instagram appeared to return to normal, per the chart.

TikTok's future is still in limbo after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 4 granting TikTok an additional 75 days to land on a solution that would meet the requirements of the divest-or-ban law. TikTok's China-based owner, ByteDance, still needs to find a new owner for its US app.

If TikTok is banned, however, Instagram could very well see another flood of users to its platform. More users spending time on Meta-owned apps like Instagram and Facebook — which both have short-form video feeds — could result in more advertising revenue for the tech giant.

EMARKETER, a sister company of Business Insider, estimated in January that Meta could gain between $2.46 billion and $3.38 billion in ad revenue if TikTok were banned.

Instagram is also gearing up to launch a new editing app for its short-form video feature reels, called Edits, in the coming weeks. It would compete with ByteDance's video editing app CapCut.

• Nexad, a new startup that wants to put ads in AI apps, raised $6 million in seed funding.
• The startup is both matching ads with audiences and creating them itself.
• Check out the 10-page pitch deck Nexad used to raise investment.

Get ready for ads in your conversations with AI chatbots.

Nexad, an adtech startup building a native advertising solution for AI apps, has raised $6 million in seed funding. The round was led by A16z Speedrun (an accelerator under the Andreessen Horowitz umbrella) and Prosus Ventures, and included participation from firms like Point72 Ventures and Sequoia Capital's Scout Fund.

"Our long-term bet is that the AI application field will be more fragmented and decentralized than the traditional internet platforms," Nexad CEO Jason Hu told Business Insider. In that case, there would be value in a service that can provide advertising across various platforms.

Advertising on AI platforms is still nascent, though some of the largest AI companies are already testing or considering bringing ads into their products. For instance, OpenAI told the Financial Times in December that it was open to exploring advertising. Meanwhile, AI search startup Perplexity began testing ads in November.

Nexad wants to position itself as an AppLovin equivalent for AI apps. AppLovin made its mark by providing advertising within a large network of gaming apps before branching out into e-commerce.

Hu said that Nexad, which was founded in 2024, has onboarded seven AI companies to its network. Those include apps like iAsk (an AI search engine) and Dippy AI (an AI companion app). Hu said there are roughly 30 million consumers that ads across these AI apps can reach.

Hu said Nexad's business has two main arms: one that matches ads with the right audiences, and another that creates the ads themselves.

Nexad runs its application with a "flywheel" model. It starts with a user search query or message sent to a chatbot. Along with the AI app's response, Nexad serves an ad relevant to the original search. Then, it takes the engagement data from interacting with the user and uses it to refine its future ads.

"Ads need to be as smart or even smarter in order to keep up with the content," Hu said.

The startup is focused slightly more on its ad generation offerings, which create text and image ads (Nexad doesn't have video ads yet).

Nexad's network runs through relationships with advertisers, affiliates, and third parties, such as e-commerce affiliate network Sovrn. The startup takes a commission of ad revenue from its publishers. It also offers different models for advertisers, including pay-per-click, per-view, per-install, and per-purchase.

For its ad-generation tech, Hu said Nexad uses open-source large language models like Llama, as well as proprietary models like Gemini, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

Although it's a young space, some other startups, such as ProRata and OpenAds, are making plays in AI advertising.

Nexad's seed investment will be used to hire more staff — it's currently a team of six — and build out more partnerships, Hu said.

Read the 10-page pitch deck Nexad used to raise $6 million.

Note: The company redacted some details in the deck.

Nexad is creating a 'native ads system for the AI era'

The deck starts with an overview of the search market share

"Consumers now discover brands via AI apps," the slide says.

The slide also includes a graph comparing Google and AI chat market share.

Nexad claims traditional search engines are 'dead' and AI chatbots are the new way people search

The slide compares side-by-side the traditional Google search query and using ChatGPT.

Then the deck dives into Nexad's product

"We're building the first AI-native ads system," the slide says.

The company is trying to merge ads into AI apps and increase brand visibility.

It outlines how many AI app users Nexad's ads could reach

The slide says that Nexad has more than 30 million AI app users in its network.

Some publishers include iAsk, Dippy AI, and Bounce (a basketball-themed AI app).

It then includes an example of how a Nexad ad would appear

In this example, the user typed to iAsk "Michael Jordan is so cool, I'm such a huge fan!" and Nexad served an ad for Air Jordan sneakers.

Nexad then explains its generative ad engine

Nexad's generative ad engine is built for contextual awareness and real-time adaptation, the slide says.

The flywheel indicates how the Nexad system works

Here's what Nexad lists as its flywheel:

1. User query
2. Nexad engine
3. Useful ad
4. Engagement data
5. Continuous refinement

The deck concludes by introducing Nexad's team

Here's what the slide says:

Jason Hu, CEO

• ML engineer at Martian; first author of RouterBench
• Monetization at TikTok
• NLP Research @UChicago.

Harry Zhou, COO

• Grew an AI video generator to 1 million users
• $20 billion USD IPO & M&A @Skadden & Cooley, Stanford Law School

Advisors

• Sr. Director @Unity ads
• Director of BD @Uber Ads

Founding Team Members

• Senior architect at Comcast
• Researcher at top AGI lab

It ends with a slide inviting the reader to reach out

• The FTC's antitrust battle with Meta kicked off on Monday.
• Meta's opening statements revealed a decline in time spent consuming content from friends.
• Meta says that just 7% of time spent on Instagram in 2025 is spent viewing content from friends.

You're not imagining it, you're definitely seeing less of your friends' content on Facebook and Instagram.

The decline in friend-focused content is playing a central role in a landmark antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission currently underway in Washington, D.C.

The FTC has accused Meta of monopolizing the personal social networking market by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize future threats. The trial could lead to a court-ordered company breakup or mark a major defeat for the FTC's aggressive approach to Big Tech.

Meta, for its part, argued that its platforms face fierce competition from apps like TikTok and YouTube, and that consumer behavior — not anti-competitive conduct — is behind the way people use Facebook and Instagram today.

Part of Meta's testimony on Monday centered on the fact that people just aren't "broadcasting" content to their friends on Facebook and Instagram as much as they used to.

"The friend part has gone down quite a bit," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Monday's trial, adding that Facebook particularly has "turned into more of a broad discovery and entertainment space."

In one slide of Meta's opening statement presentation, the company says that the "time spent viewing content posted by 'friends'" has declined. In 2023, the time spent viewing friends' content was 22% on Facebook and 11% on Instagram. By 2025, that timeshare has dropped to 17% and 7%, respectively.

That's due in part to Meta's prioritization of short-form video and changes in how it recommends content to users.

In recent months, Meta has made a public show of trying to reverse the trend of users seeing fewer friend posts. In March, the company launched a new "friends" tab on Facebook that shows only posts, stories, and reels from people a user actually knows — no recommended content or algorithmic distractions. Zuckerberg has said it's part of a broader effort to bring back "OG Facebook," a more intimate version of the platform that returns to its roots and focuses on personal connections.

"I think we're going to build some awesome things that shape the future of human connection," he said on the company's last earnings call in January, and later described it on a podcast as "phase one of bringing back OG Facebook."

Instagram, meanwhile, has continued to expand friends-focused features like "Close Friends," and its top exec, Adam Mosseri, said earlier this year that it would double down on direct messaging in 2025.

In another slide of Meta's opening statement, the company says that people are going to DMs to share things with their friends. One slide includes a quote from Mosseri: "I think [Instagram]'s more of a messaging app than a broadcast-sharing app at this point."

"The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality," a spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider in a statement. "The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others."

Here are four interesting slides from Meta's opening statement:

Meta breaks down how time spent viewing content from users' friends has declined

"Broadcast 'Friends' Sharing Decline Has Continued," the slide says. Meta says the percentage of time spent viewing friends' content in 2023 was 22% on Facebook and 11% on Instagram.

Meta says that the decline has continued.

The slide says that the percentage of time spent viewing friends' content in 2025 declined to 17% on Facebook and 7% on Instagram.

Meta breaks down how the TikTok ban impacted hourly time spent on Instagram

Instagram usage increased "dramatically," the slide says.

'People have gone to Messaging for Friend Sharing'

The slide includes a screenshot of an email sent by Adam Mosseri in 2018 about messaging.

"Most personal sharing will be in messaging. There are 63x as many messages sent a day as posts on Facebook, and 10x as many messages as comments," the slide says.

"I think [Instagram]'s more of a messaging app than a broadcast-sharing app at this point," the slide says.

• Gen Z collage app Landing has rebranded to Zeen.
• Zeen is targeting fashion and lifestyle creators with tools for making shoppable content.
• Here's why the startup is pivoting from being a social media platform to being a creator tool.

Landing, a social collaging app that became a favorite among Gen Z users, is making a pivot.

The startup is rebranding to Zeen and targeting content creators as its core user base. Zeen is offering these creators the ability to make shoppable collages.

"We kept seeing this behavior of people wanting to shop from each other's collages, and fashion was always the biggest vertical on Landing," Zeen cofounder Miri Buckland told Business Insider.

Like any social media platform these days — just take a glance at any TikTok or Instagram post that includes an outfit — Buckland said the comment sections on Landing posts were flooded with questions like "Where did you get that dress?"

While some people (myself included) used Landing to create digital collages without clothing or products, Buckland said the overwhelming use case was outfit planning and fashion mood boarding.

Zeen, the startup's new product, is doubling down on this.

The web-only tool lets users design collages by dropping in online shopping links or uploading images. Creators can also include affiliate marketing links, like from ShopMy or LTK. Then, creators can save an image or a video of the collage to share on platforms like Substack, Instagram, and TikTok.

"What we're building with Zeen is very strictly a tool and a utility," Zeen cofounder Ellie Buckingham said. "We're not building a full social platform."

Pivoting is par for the course for startups — and it's not Zeen's first time doing so. The startup originally focused on interior design with Landing before expanding into broader categories like vision boards or fandom art. Zeen shut down Landing in September.

The startup has money in the bank to back its pivot, too.

Last year, Zeen secured another $2.3 million in funding led by venture capital firm Stellation Capital, bringing the startup's total funding to date to $9 million, Buckland told BI.

Building for the creator economy

Creators often have a robust stack of creative tools they use to make content. If they're video creators, maybe that's editing tools like CapCut. For others, it could be Canva, Adobe, or photo-editing tools like VSCO.

Zeen wants to be part of creators' tech stacks for making visual, shoppable content.

Several of Zeen's early users are Substack newsletter creators, particularly in the fashion and lifestyle category. For instance, Erika Veurink, who writes a fashion Substack called "Long Live" with 28,000 subscribers, has used Zeen for in-newsletter collages of furniture and clothing. Veurink is an advisor to Zeen.

Aditi Shah, a Peleton instructor and creator, has also been using Zeen on her Substack "Work in Progress" to showcase her favorite beauty products of the month.

With Zeen, newsletter creators can earn money if they use affiliate links. When uploading affiliate links into a Zeen collage, the platform will generate a list of the products and links for creators to copy and paste into their newsletters.

Zeen's premium tier ($6 per month) lets creators bulk-upload products from their ShopMy Collections, and unlocks unlimited use of tools like one that removes the background of product images and watermarks.

While many of Zeen's early adopters are Substackers, the startup is "platform agnostic" and aimed at creators using any newsletter tool (such as Beehiiv) or social platform (like Instagram and TikTok). Creators can export collages to fit Instagram stories and export video versions of the collage for vertical video feeds.

"The idea is, can we take what our creators are really good at, which is this curation and merchandising of products, and then automatically give them something that allows them to have a content type that competes on a video-first platform," Buckingham said.