• The Super Bowl has embraced creators as the NFL looks to expand the audience for the game.
• The league is bringing a host of creators to New Orleans and partnering with platforms like YouTube.
• Brands are also looking for new ways to include creators in their Super Bowl marketing.

Influencers are everywhere at the Super Bowl this week as brands consider the game a key fixture of culture and entertainment.

The NFL plans to host over 150 creators in New Orleans for the big game, from local names to international figures, Ad Age reported. YouTubers Kai Cenat and Darren Jason Watkins Jr., known online as IShowSpeed, are set to lead a flag football game with creators like Carter Kench and Matthew "MMG" Meagher and other big names on the Saturday before the main event, YouTube announced.

The Super Bowl embraced content creators in a big way last year as part of a growing partnership between the NFL and YouTube. It came as YouTube started streaming the NFL's Sunday Ticket package in 2023.

This year, influencers in sports, fashion, gaming, and other niches are getting involved again to connect with Gen Z and other young audiences. The NFL is expanding its partnerships with social platforms, including working with Snapchat. And brands are looking for new ways to include creators in their Super Bowl marketing.

"By working with influencers and creators, you're meeting the audience where it is," said Alex Sheinman, cofounder and talent manager at the Snapback Agency, which works with content creators and athletes. "If I'm on Instagram or TikTok, the NFL is now coming to where I am … That's why it's so powerful."

How the NFL is working with platforms like YouTube and Snapchat

Snapchat struck a new partnership with the NFL this year that will bring some of its creators to the Super Bowl. Snapchatters such as Katie Austin, Ross Smith, Jack Mancuso, and Treasure Wilson are set to get access behind the scenes and to special augmented-reality lenses created with the NFL, Snapchat said.

The platform prioritized creators in areas other than football, such as fitness, food, lifestyle, fashion, and entertainment. The NFL was looking to include creators who aren't exposed to the league so it "can kind of drive new fandom," Anmol Malhotra, head of sport and media partnerships for Snapchat's parent company, told BI.

"Our goal was to capture the casual fan," Malhotra said. "The person who may not know who Patrick Mahomes is, that Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift, or who Jalen Hurts is, but can relate to a tailgate."

YouTube is also expanding its partnership with the NFL. In addition to the flag football game, YouTube is hosting a tailgate concert headlined by rapper Post Malone. Several top YouTube creators will also be creating content from New Orleans.

Influencers are high on the list for brand activations and sponsorships

Influencers are also showing up in traditional TV ads during the game. TikTok influencer Alix Earle is in ads from Carl's Jr. and Poppi. Poppi's ad also features creators like Jake Shane and Rob Rausch.

Major brands like Gatorade and Verizon are inviting influencers to their activations around the Super Bowl and incorporating them into their marketing strategies around the game again this year, as well.

For example, Gatorade is on the ground with athletes like Caitlin Clark and George Kittle and influencers like The Pointer Brothers and Katie Feeney for its Gatorade Lab activation. And, Verizon's activation will feature influencer Tineke Younger, who will host a brunch and cook her favorite Super Bowl dishes, as well as designer Kristin Juszczyk, who will showcase her designers.

Still, some in the influencer industry said they noticed a dip in the number of brand activations and opportunities compared to last year's game. That's in part because there's more limited space for these activations in New Orleans compared to last year's Super Bowl host.

"There's definitely still stuff going on, but it's just a noticeable dip," Jack Settleman, a sports content creator and CEO of Snapback Agency's sister company, Snapback Sports, told BI.

Settleman is doing brand work with Crown Royal while in the Big Easy. He has been to the Super Bowl several times and witnessed it embrace creators firsthand. He went from having to sneak his way into Radio Row to having his own booth among the media outlets on the convention center floor.

"The NFL has absolutely embraced creators," said Settleman. "As a creator, it's really exciting to see those opportunities."

With a wide audience tuning in for the big game, spanning generations, partnering with content creators is an easy way for these brands and the NFL to appeal to everyone and get content directly to specific audiences that may be outside the traditional football fandom.

"The NFL is seeing more new fans than ever before," Emily Boido, head of consumer engagement for Gatorade, told BI. "By partnering with a wide variety of influential voices in and around the sport, we have the opportunity to reach these expanding audiences in a way that's authentic to the brand."

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the chief executive of the California Community Foundation, Miguel Santana, are launching a program focused on helping residents in Altadena and Pacific Palisades rebuild on their own terms after last month’s wildfires. The California Community Foundation, Snap, Spiegel, and Snap CTO Bobby Murphy are committing $10 million in funding to staff […]

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In a bid to boost its subscription service and attract more paying users, Snapchat is rolling out additional features for Snapchat+ subscribers, including allowing Snapchat+ subscribers to create AI-generated stickers in chats. The social media company is also adding the option to send self-destructing Snaps. Snapchat+ subscribers in the U.S. can now create and send […]

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• Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the "environment of uncertainty" around TikTok is good for its business.
• Snap saw a boost in engagement when TikTok "went dark" last month, Spiegel told investors.
• Snap's daily active users rose to 453 million in Q4 amid TikTok's uncertain future.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told investors this week that his company benefited from TikTok's uncertain future in the United States.

Snap told investors in an earnings call Tuesday that it increased its daily active user count to 453 million in Q4, a 9% year-over-year increase.

While Snap has seen a general uptick in users, Spiegel said the company saw a significant traffic boost when TikTok briefly shut down on January 19.

TikTok briefly stopped providing service in the United States after the Supreme Court upheld a law forcing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app. TikTok reversed course after newly inaugurated President Donald Trump promised to address the issue.

Trump signed an executive order on January 21 granting TikTok another 75 days to find a buyer. The social media app's future remains uncertain.

Spiegel told investors that Snap isn't looking too closely at the engagement boost it received during the TikTok outage but said he thinks the overall volatility of the short-form video space is helping the company in the long run.

"We're not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment of uncertainty is benefiting our business," he said on the call.

Snap said in the earnings release that the number of creators posting to Snapchat grew by 40% year-over-year in the fourth quarter thanks to its Snap Star program, which program in which Snap partners with creators.

"More than one billion Snaps were shared publicly on Snapchat every month in Q4 from our community, creators, and media partners," the release says.

During Snap’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Evan Spiegel said that the uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future has positively affected its business. “We’re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when [TikTok] went dark for that brief period of time. I would say that the overall environment […]

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Snap announced on Thursday that it’s introducing a new “Challenge Tags” rewards program for AR developers to win cash prizes for submitting Lenses. The company also announced that it’s launching educational pricing and a student discount for Spectacles, its developer-focused AR glasses. The theme of the first Challenge Tag is humor and is open through […]

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• Have you bought a virtual reality or augmented reality headset?
• If so, you're part of a small group of consumers — despite repeated predictions that the market will boom.
• Meta alone has lost $60 billion on this tech over five years. It's going to keep spending, says Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg has spent tens of billions of dollars chasing it. Some of the biggest names in tech, including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Sony, have poured in billions more. For years.

But so far, no one has nailed it.

Maybe one day wearing computers on our heads will be something many of us do all the time, instead of a novelty we try a few times and then forget. We're not there yet.

It doesn't matter whether you're talking about super high-end devices like the Apple Vision Pro or low-priced novelties, like early editions of Snap's Spectacles. Or whether you're discussing virtual reality devices that create an entirely new world around the user or augmented reality headsets that let you see the outside world as well as digital images. All of these devices have yet to take off. Consumer demand isn't budging.

That hasn't stopped the tech industry from trying. Or deterred people around the tech world from predicting that one day, this will be a huge market.

You can see this spelled out in a new chart from analyst and investor Matthew Ball, as part of a new report he's released on the problems in the video gaming business. This one tracks the gap between projected headset sales, as estimated by International Data Corp., and actual sales.

As you can see, while IDC has been continually bullish about VR and AR headsets, consumer interest has lagged far behind. No matter what's on offer, at whatever price, these devices seem mired in the 10 million units a year or less range.

That's not to suggest that Zuckerberg — who has racked up more than $60 billion in losses on this tech over the past five years, filings show — is chasing after the market because of an IDC estimate. It just shows you that for close to a decade, the industry has been excited about this stuff, while many consumers remain unimpressed.

I talked to Jitesh Ubrani, the IDC researcher who works on this stuff, about the gap between his company's projections — which, to be fair, are projections — and reality.

He said his shop has become less optimistic over time about the market, which you can see reflected on the right side of the chart.

"Everyone is a bit more realistic about these expectations," he said, noting that the market for the tech has been "notably volatile" over the past few years, as big players like Microsoft and Google temper their interest in headsets. Meta PR declined to comment.

In his public comments, Zuckerberg has been telling investors that he'll continue chasing virtual and augmented reality tech, and that they should expect to see more losses in the future.

For him, the stakes seem quite clear: He wants people to use a new computing platform instead of, or in addition to, phones. And he wants to be able to interact with them on that platform without Google or Apple getting involved, as they do with their mobile platforms. And if all of that happens — meaning that Zuckerberg essentially creates the next iPhone — then burning tens of billions on R&D will seem like a good bet.

Meanwhile, Meta does seem to be making progress. The Orion glasses Zuckerberg showed off last fall — but isn't selling yet — are super-impressive. I've tried them, and I could definitely imagine using some version of them if they were way cheaper, and worked as advertised.

But those are big ifs, and it's possible Meta never figures out how to make these things at scale, and in a way that will sell hundreds of millions of units per year — like Apple does with its phones. But someone, somewhere, will keep insisting that the headset of the future is just around the corner.

• The Supreme Court ruled to uphold a TikTok ban — and several apps are vying for its crown.
• Sister app Lemon8 has soared in popularity but is likely to get the ax, too.
• Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have competed in short-form video for years, and RedNote recently attracted US users.

As TikTok inches toward potential extinction in the US, creators are trying to transition viewers to other platforms, while some viewers are already in a state of mourning.

The app is set to be yanked from US app stores on January 19, after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold a law on Friday forcing China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of Tiktok or face a ban.

If the app goes dark, US users will have to look elsewhere for a short-form video fix. TikTok's ethos and community are unique, but competing formats exist on the world's biggest social-media apps, and are also offered by emerging competitors.

Here's who is — and who's not — in the running.

Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have been competing in short-form video for years

Data shows that new apps often struggle to gain long-term traction when they have well-established rivals. And Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat have all been competing in the short-form space for years.

Meta launched Instagram Reels in 2020 to great success — even chipping away at TikTok usage, according to two studies from last year. Analysts predict Meta will be the biggest winner if TikTok goes dark in the US.

YouTube, the original video giant, added short-form video in 2021, which has paid off handsomely. More recently, the Google-owned platform has used the prospect of a ban as a selling point for its ad team.

Snapchat, for its part, launched a TikTok counterpart called Spotlight in 2020, offering payouts to get creators to post.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has more recently targeted TikTok by encouraging influencers to post short-form content. Some have told Business Insider that they've seen engagement boosts as a result.

Chinese app Rednote has seen a surge in popularity

Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, another Chinese social app — which functions like Instagram and TikTok but with more commerce features — has recently surged in popularity, with some TikTok users learning Mandarin to make the transition.

It could, however, also be subject to the same divest-or-ban law as TikTok if the US government chose to target it.

Downloads have spiked for Texas-based Clapper

Clapper, a Texas-based challenger, was founded in 2020, when the idea of a Tiktok ban was first tossed around by the Trump administration.

The app at one point reached third place in the free iPhone app download charts, with Clapper seeing an uptick in downloads whenever the news of a Tiktok ban again makes headlines.

Triller has long positioned itself as a TikTok rival

Triller has long sought to position itself as an alternative to TikTok — and currently offers a tool to help creators save their videos.

Triller has gone through a series of strategy shifts over the years. After several false starts, it went public late last year through a reverse merger with a Hong Kong-based company called AGBA Group Holding Limited.

It recently hired former TikTok product head Sean Kim to run its video app, as well as several other subsidiaries.

Apps like Whatnot could fill a shopping void

TikTok helped social shopping break through in the US in a major way in 2024. The app drove $100 million in US sales on Black Friday alone, for example.

It's not the only one in the space, however. Some of its competitors include Flip and Complex Shop, formerly known as NTWRK. Flip, which raised $144 million last April at a $1 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg, launched in 2019 and enables users to post short, shoppable reviews.

Whatnot also made headlines after closing a $265 million funding round earlier this month at a $5 billion valuation. The app hosts livestreams across categories like fashion, collectibles, and storage unit finds.

TikTok's sister app, Lemon8, would likely get the ax too

TikTok sister app, Lemon8, has soared to the top of the app charts in recent weeks. Lemon8 is reminiscent of Pinterest and contains a mix of photos and videos.

However, given that the law specifically mentions ByteDance, the parent company of the two apps, Lemon8 would likely be banned along with TikTok.

Christopher Krepich, the communications director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, previously told Forbes the bill would ban Lemon8 unless ByteDance divested.

TikTok has warned of a looming shutdown in just six days, as the Supreme Court is currently weighing the law that would ban the app. So we thought it’s time to take a look at other platforms that may be able to fill the TikTok-shaped hole in our lives.  The law gives TikTok parent company […]

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For every illegal drug, there is a combination of emojis that dealers and consumers use to evade detection on social media and messaging platforms. Snowflakes, snowfall, and snowmen symbolize cocaine. Love hearts, lightning bolts, and pill capsules mean MDMA, or molly. Brown hearts and dragons represent heroin. Grapes and baby bottles are the calling cards for codeine-containing cough syrup, or lean. The humble maple leaf, meanwhile, is the universal symbol for all drugs.

The proliferation of open drug dealing on Instagram, Snapchat, and X—as well as on encrypted messaging platforms Telegram and WhatsApp—has transformed the fabric of illegal substance procurement, gradually making it more convenient, and arguably safer, for consumers, who can receive packages in the mail without meeting people on street corners or going through the rigmarole of the dark web. There is no reliable way to gauge drug trafficking on social media, but the European Union Drugs Agency acknowledged in its latest report on the drivers of European drug sales that purchases brokered through such platforms “appear to be gaining in prominence.”

Initial studies into drug sales on social media began to be published in 2012. Over the next decade, piecemeal studies began to reveal a notable portion of drug sales were being mediated by social platforms. In 2021, it was estimated some 20 percent of drug purchases in Ireland were being arranged through social media. In the US in 2018 and Spain in 2019, a tenth of young people who used drugs appear to have connected with dealers through the internet, with the large majority doing so through social media, according to one small study.

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