K. David Pirnazar

Beyond the Slop #46 - Roblox AI Moderates Servers Roblox is deploying AI that automatically shuts down rule-breaking game servers. • AI scans entire scenes including avatars, text, and 3D objects • Around 5,000 servers per day are already being shut down • Only the violating server is closed, not the entire game Instead of banning players after reports, the game shuts itself down instantly. That’s a big change for user-generated platforms like Roblox. AI isn’t just making games anymore, it’s running them. https://lnkd.in/e-F4s48e

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Creative tech is crossing the chasm—again. The vocoder started as wartime telecom tech, built to compress and encrypt human speech. Today? It’s a defining sound in music. Thanks to Montréal favorite Chromeo!!! That’s the pattern: 👉 Utility → Experimentation → Culture → Industry standard We’re now watching the same arc play out across AI, spatial computing, and generative tools. What began as “creative tech” is becoming core infrastructure in many markets and setting standard in culture. The takeaway: Don’t underestimate tools born at the edge. (And funk never die!) https://lnkd.in/g-PEwCcT

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Nine months ago, when I published "Streaming has a Mobile Opportunity", I missed a $100B data point: that's the size of the Vertical Video market. Yes, you read that right. Vertical Video is on track to make over $100B in revenue in 2025, most of it going to Meta and TikTok, but with other players in the mix. The Short Drama economy I cover regularly, at $3B ex-China, is included in that number. For comparison, Ampere Analysis estimates the entire SVOD sector to have $188B in revenue in 2025 (across subscriptions and ads). Vertical Video is already *over half* of SVOD. Is it too late? Not at all. Vertical video is barely a decade old: for over a century, all video was horizontal. The iPhone didn't support video recording until 2009, and it was only in 2014 that teenagers on Snapchat started to record video vertically, puzzling onlookers. Consumer use led to professional use. TikTok launched in the US in 2018; Shorts and Reels as experiments in 2020, the same year that the first short dramas emerged in China. But the video supply chains across production, post, distribution and advertising still lean heavily horizontal. The bottom line: we're early. And streamers can, and should (and some already are) have a vertical video strategy. For companies watching the WB auction unfold, regardless of outcome, vertical video represents an immediate strategic imperative. It's not just another format: it's a churn reduction tool, an ad inventory multiplier, and a way to capture younger audiences where they already spend their time. In this week's Streamonomics®, I go into all the functions vertical video can serve for a streamer, from self-supporting upper funnel to churn reduction tool and advertising inventory and granularity multiplier. Have specific ideas for Spotify (which wants to increase ad revenue and screen-on consumption), and go into why whoever doesn't win the WB auction (and even the one company who does) should be looking at the space closely. THE BIGGER PICTURE: → Vertical Video's $100B+ revenue in 2025 (up 2x YoY) represents a seismic shift in content economics. → We're still early: vertical video is barely 10 years old, compared to a century of horizontal video dominance → Streamers who ignore vertical are leaving money on the table: it can be simultaneously an upper funnel, engagement driver, and ad inventory multiplier → The WB auction participants should all be developing vertical strategies now: this isn't a "nice to have" anymore Which streamer do you think will be first to truly crack the vertical video opportunity?

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