🔎TODAY’S DAILY SIFT: THE FEED For years creators chased followers. But followers were never really ownership. Yesterday YouTube pushed further into Creator Shows, brand integration and frictionless commerce. Its own research says viewers are five times more likely to buy a product after hearing about it from a creator on YouTube. Threads simultaneously introduced podcast tools designed to turn episodes into conversations, discovery and measurable engagement inside its platform. Different moves. Same ambition. Platforms want the entire relationship. Discovery. Attention. Conversation. Commerce. Subscription. And AI makes the platform more powerful. As recommendation algorithms improve, what you chose to follow matters less than what the machine predicts you will watch next. That creates an uncomfortable reality for creators: Followers are rented. Relationships are owned. The next generation of successful creators will not simply accumulate audiences. They will conv...