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Clothing and nudity.
The weekend has come early for many (former) Twitter employees. When asked to choose between three months’ severance pay and working ‘long hours at high intensity,’ many (obviously) decided to take the money. But what will they do for work? OnlyFans announced it is now allowing creators to sell merchandise, so I guess that’s an option.
The lowdown
🐦 Twitter's employee exodus in the wake of Elon’s ultimatum.
🇯🇵 Masayoshi Son personally owes SoftBank $4.7 billion after valuations come down.
🪙 New FTX CEO notes ‘complete failure of corporate controls’ at the company.
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Credit: Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch
OnlyFans adds another revenue stream for creators
Privately held content subscription service OnlyFans announced a partnership with Spring that will enable its roughly 3 million creators to sell merchandise, such as t-shirts, through the platform.
The company generally takes a 20% cut of all transactions made through the site, though it will not take a cut of the new merchandise transactions. The integration is instead designed to incentivize creators to integrate their businesses more deeply with the platform.
OnlyFans is best known for the pornography that most of its creators produce. This is one reason it has struggled to attract VC funding or advertising dollars ($). It has also run into problems with banks when trying to collect money and pay its creators. For these reasons, it banned explicit content from its platform in 2021, before swiftly reversing the decision after a backlash.
Despite these obstacles, it is hugely profitable($). Its annual report revealed pre-tax profits of $433 million on revenues of $932 million in the year to November 2021. OnlyFans users spent $4.8 billion on the platform during this time. Whether fans will pay for clothing while paying for nudity remains to be seen.
The content we're consuming today
The Economist: Why Indonesia Matters ($).
Off-balance sheet items
Nike’s new World Cup ad is awesome, even if the de-ageing visual effects are a little dodgy at times.