Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The Biggest Social Media Operation You've Never Heard Of Is Run Out of Cyprus by Russians
https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-youve-never-heard-run-out-cyprus-russians
By Lisa Kaplan Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 2:00 PM
What the heck is TheSoul Publishing? I’m still honestly not sure.
Here’s what I do know: Measured in terms of views and subscribers, it had the third-largest reach of any group of entertainment channels on YouTube in November—outranked only by Disney and WarnerMedia. It is run by Russian nationals and based in and managed from Cyprus, with U.S. operations housed in a shared work space in New York. It funds itself with ad revenues from YouTube and Google worth tens of millions of dollars. And in 2018, it purchased a small suite of Facebook advertisements targeting U.S. citizens on political issues—and it made those purchases in rubles.
<snip>
I researched the company without special access to data and using only publicly available information from sources such as the front-end data on the social media platforms, public records and interviews. Here is what I learned.
TheSoul is a web publishing company that distributes its content across a range of YouTube channels. The more popular channels—like 5-Minute Crafts, Bright Side, 5-Minute Crafts Kids, 5-Minute Crafts Girly, 7-Second Riddles and 5-Minute Magic—post multiple times a day and, according to publicly available information found on YouTube, have uploaded more than 1,000 videos each since their creation. The company’s website boasts 140 YouTube channels and 70 Facebook pages. I have been able to identify 35 YouTube channels and 25 Facebook pages that identify connections with TheSoul Publishing. Asked about the discrepancy, a representative of the company confirms that these are all of the English-language sites but says the company also runs channels in several other languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Japanese. The oldest of the YouTube channels I have seen was created in 2016; the oldest Facebook page dates from 2015.
TheSoul’s numbers are undeniably impressive. Its largest channels have millions of subscribers and billions of views, according to information publicly available on the YouTube channels themselves. As of Dec. 16, 2019, 5-Minute Crafts had more than 62.8 million subscribers, and a total of 16,648,886,677 views; Bright Side had more than 32.3 million subscribers and 6,286,157,368 views.
According to Tubular Labs, a company that provides insights into metrics for each brand creator, in November 2019, TheSoul Publishing had the third most views of any media and entertainment creator on YouTube and Facebook, behind only the Walt Disney Company and WarnerMedia. In October, it was fourth. And in November, 5-Minute Crafts was the second most viewed of any media and entertainment channel.
This is all especially impressive because I have been unable to identify any YouTube channels associated with TheSoul Publishing that were created before 2016. According to the information found on its various YouTube channels, 5-Minute Crafts began Nov. 15, 2016, while Bright Side began March 15, 2017. The majority of TheSoul Publishing’s channels were created in 2018 and 2019, according to an examination of 35 of its sites.
</snip>
By Lisa Kaplan Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 2:00 PM
What the heck is TheSoul Publishing? I’m still honestly not sure.
Here’s what I do know: Measured in terms of views and subscribers, it had the third-largest reach of any group of entertainment channels on YouTube in November—outranked only by Disney and WarnerMedia. It is run by Russian nationals and based in and managed from Cyprus, with U.S. operations housed in a shared work space in New York. It funds itself with ad revenues from YouTube and Google worth tens of millions of dollars. And in 2018, it purchased a small suite of Facebook advertisements targeting U.S. citizens on political issues—and it made those purchases in rubles.
<snip>
I researched the company without special access to data and using only publicly available information from sources such as the front-end data on the social media platforms, public records and interviews. Here is what I learned.
TheSoul is a web publishing company that distributes its content across a range of YouTube channels. The more popular channels—like 5-Minute Crafts, Bright Side, 5-Minute Crafts Kids, 5-Minute Crafts Girly, 7-Second Riddles and 5-Minute Magic—post multiple times a day and, according to publicly available information found on YouTube, have uploaded more than 1,000 videos each since their creation. The company’s website boasts 140 YouTube channels and 70 Facebook pages. I have been able to identify 35 YouTube channels and 25 Facebook pages that identify connections with TheSoul Publishing. Asked about the discrepancy, a representative of the company confirms that these are all of the English-language sites but says the company also runs channels in several other languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Japanese. The oldest of the YouTube channels I have seen was created in 2016; the oldest Facebook page dates from 2015.
TheSoul’s numbers are undeniably impressive. Its largest channels have millions of subscribers and billions of views, according to information publicly available on the YouTube channels themselves. As of Dec. 16, 2019, 5-Minute Crafts had more than 62.8 million subscribers, and a total of 16,648,886,677 views; Bright Side had more than 32.3 million subscribers and 6,286,157,368 views.
According to Tubular Labs, a company that provides insights into metrics for each brand creator, in November 2019, TheSoul Publishing had the third most views of any media and entertainment creator on YouTube and Facebook, behind only the Walt Disney Company and WarnerMedia. In October, it was fourth. And in November, 5-Minute Crafts was the second most viewed of any media and entertainment channel.
This is all especially impressive because I have been unable to identify any YouTube channels associated with TheSoul Publishing that were created before 2016. According to the information found on its various YouTube channels, 5-Minute Crafts began Nov. 15, 2016, while Bright Side began March 15, 2017. The majority of TheSoul Publishing’s channels were created in 2018 and 2019, according to an examination of 35 of its sites.
</snip>
On edit: a little more from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-Minute_Crafts#History
History
TheSoul Publishing was founded by Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, a Russian-based team noticed for their backgrounds in social media content creation, and for launching AdMe.ru and BrightSide.me.
On November 15, 2016, 5-Minute Crafts was registered on YouTube by TheSoul Publishing. The channel's first video, "5 essential DIY hacks that you need to know" was uploaded the following day.
In 2017, the channel's subscriber and video view counts started to grow rapidly. In an article published by Mic in June 2017, 5-Minute Crafts was noted to have accumulated over 4 million subscribers. In 2017 and onward, various sub-channels were also created by TheSoul Publishing. These sub-channels were launched with the purpose to give certain content to specific audiences.
In April 2018, Tubefilter covered a trend regarding springtime cleaning videos on YouTube, noting 5-Minute Crafts' participation. By November, Vox wrote that 5-Minute Crafts was a "wildly successful" channel, citing its then over 10 billion video views and its ranking as the fifth most-subscribed channel on YouTube, having nearly 40 million subscribers at the time. During one week in December 2018, the channel received over 238 million video views.
As of November 2019, the channel had 61.9 million subscribers, ranking it as the fourth most-subscribed channel on the platform that is not operated by YouTube, behind T-Series, PewDiePie and Cocomelon.
</snip>
History
TheSoul Publishing was founded by Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, a Russian-based team noticed for their backgrounds in social media content creation, and for launching AdMe.ru and BrightSide.me.
On November 15, 2016, 5-Minute Crafts was registered on YouTube by TheSoul Publishing. The channel's first video, "5 essential DIY hacks that you need to know" was uploaded the following day.
In 2017, the channel's subscriber and video view counts started to grow rapidly. In an article published by Mic in June 2017, 5-Minute Crafts was noted to have accumulated over 4 million subscribers. In 2017 and onward, various sub-channels were also created by TheSoul Publishing. These sub-channels were launched with the purpose to give certain content to specific audiences.
In April 2018, Tubefilter covered a trend regarding springtime cleaning videos on YouTube, noting 5-Minute Crafts' participation. By November, Vox wrote that 5-Minute Crafts was a "wildly successful" channel, citing its then over 10 billion video views and its ranking as the fifth most-subscribed channel on YouTube, having nearly 40 million subscribers at the time. During one week in December 2018, the channel received over 238 million video views.
As of November 2019, the channel had 61.9 million subscribers, ranking it as the fourth most-subscribed channel on the platform that is not operated by YouTube, behind T-Series, PewDiePie and Cocomelon.
</snip>
10 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
