As followership wanes, TikTok resets relations between creators and fans
Marketplace Tech
American Public Media
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Patreon, a company that enables fans to directly support internet creators financially, has produced a report looking at how creators and their fans are feeling these days. One finding: Fans say they’re seeing more short-form work on social media, even though they prefer long-form content. And more than half of creators surveyed say it’s harder to reach their followers now than five years ago. This is part of what the report calls the “TikTokification of the internet.” Brielle Villablanca, vice president of communications and creator advocacy at Patreon, discusses the trade-offs for creators in the current TikTok-driven environment with Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A look at the creator economy in 2025. |
| 0:04.3 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. |
| 0:07.1 | I'm Stephanie Hughes. |
| 0:17.6 | Patreon, a company that lets fans directly support creators financially, has a new report |
| 0:22.8 | looking at how creators and their fans are feeling these days. One finding, fans say they're |
| 0:28.4 | seeing more short-form work on social media, even though they prefer long-form content. |
| 0:33.7 | And more than 50% of creators surveyed say it's harder to reach their followers now than it was five years ago. |
| 0:41.0 | This is part of what the report calls the TikTokification of the internet. |
| 0:45.5 | I spoke about all this with Brielle Villablanca, VP of Communications and Creator Advocacy at Patreon. |
| 0:51.5 | The internet really used to be architected around the follow. If you followed |
| 0:55.1 | something, someone, you saw everything that they posted. You saw everything that they shared. |
| 0:59.1 | And then when TikTok started to really get big, the For You page changed everything for creators. |
| 1:04.9 | Because as opposed to seeing who you follow, TikTok surfaced who they think that you want to see. |
| 1:10.6 | That worked really well. It got people to spend a lot of time on the app, which, you follow, TikTok surfaced who they think that you want to see. That worked really well. It got |
| 1:11.8 | people to spend a lot of time on the app, which benefited advertisers and benefited these platforms. |
| 1:17.5 | So other platforms really followed. If we look at the For You page, it was intended for creators |
| 1:23.5 | to be discovered. And what we realized is like it's actually not for you. It's for the |
| 1:27.7 | platform. It's for their benefit and for advertisers. So we've seen really an erosion of |
| 1:32.4 | creator-to-fan connection and creator control over what they make because they're creating |
| 1:37.3 | to optimize for fan engagement over what they actually value creating. Yeah. I mean, is that |
| 1:43.2 | affecting what these creators make? |
| 1:45.1 | A hundred percent. We had some really interesting conversations with folks who are talking about |
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