Editor’s Note
A year ago, we set out to map the creator economy and understand who and what was really driving culture. A lot has changed since then.
Creators aren’t just competing for attention anymore. They’re building media companies, launching businesses, developing intellectual property and redefining how audiences connect with entertainment, brands and each other. Meanwhile, AI is transforming how content gets made, and the lines between traditional media and the creator economy are becoming harder to distinguish.
That’s why we’re back with our second annual Creator Ecosphere Map, in collaboration with media cartographer Evan Shapiro (ESHAP).
This year’s map goes deeper, looking beyond follower counts to measure audience affinity, while expanding our view of the platforms, tools, studios and businesses powering this rapidly evolving industry.
Whether you’re a creator, brand, media company or simply trying to understand where culture is headed, consider this your guide to the new creator economy.
— Shira Lazar, Founder & CEO, What’s Trending
Mapping the Creator Economy in 2026
The creator economy isn’t just growing. It’s fundamentally changing how media works.
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For the second year, What’s Trending and media cartographer Evan Shapiro have joined forces to visualize the people, platforms and businesses shaping digital culture. The 2026 edition is scheduled to be unveiled at the inaugural Jupiter Festival in Miami on October 8.
From YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to newsletters, podcasts, independent studios, AI-powered production tools and talent agencies, the map reveals the infrastructure behind today’s creator-driven media landscape.
Last year’s map focused on Engagement Quality (EQ), examining how audiences interacted with creators relative to follower counts. This year’s version introduces the Affinity Quotient (AQ), placing greater emphasis on active audience signals such as shares while accounting for likes, comments and views.
AQ grades creators on a 0–100 scale relative to others on the same platform, based on median post activity over a 60-day window. It is not a universal score for comparing unlike platforms.
The map also builds on the Creator Affinity 100, presented at IBC with Whalar Group and data powered by Foam. Together, the projects point toward what Shapiro calls the Affinity Economy: a landscape in which creators, brands and traditional media companies compete for attention, trust and loyalty.
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Here’s what the new map tells us.
YouTube: The Center of the Creator Universe
With roughly 2.7 billion monthly active users on the map, YouTube continues to demonstrate just how far creator-led entertainment has come.
MrBeast exemplifies the transformation from individual creator to full-scale entertainment business, while children’s entertainment, music channels and educational personalities such as Mark Rober demonstrate the platform’s wide range of audiences and formats.
YouTube is no longer simply where creators upload videos. It’s where they develop recurring entertainment franchises, launch products, sell sponsorships and build enterprises capable of competing with traditional studios.
AQ adds a revealing dimension: the channel with the most subscribers doesn’t necessarily generate the strongest response from its audience. Scale matters, but it isn’t the whole story.
TikTok: The Global Culture Machine
With roughly 1.9 billion monthly active users shown on the map, TikTok remains a major engine of internet trends across music, fashion, comedy and shopping.
Khaby Lame and Charli D’Amelio represent an early generation of worldwide TikTok stars, while its recommendation-driven experience continues to introduce audiences to emerging voices across countries and languages.
TikTok excels at discovery, but virality is not the same as loyalty. A smaller creator with a highly responsive audience may demonstrate stronger affinity than a celebrity with many more followers.
The continuing challenge is converting fleeting visibility into a sustainable community, business or body of work.
Instagram: Where Celebrity Meets Creator Entrepreneurship
At approximately 3 billion monthly active users, Instagram remains the crossroads of celebrity, independent creators and global brands.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Selena Gomez illustrate its extraordinary reach, while creators use Reels, Stories, direct messaging and shopping features to connect audiences with their businesses.
The line between creator and celebrity keeps blurring. Influencers launch companies, brands behave like publishers, and public figures adopt the rhythms of creator content.
The new emphasis on affinity helps distinguish sheer visibility from genuine audience participation. Having millions of followers is one measure of influence; motivating them to engage and share is another.
Facebook: The Global Reach Machine
Facebook still holds enormous distribution power, with around 3.1 billion monthly active users represented on the map.
Its largest audiences span athletes, entertainers, publishers and brands. It may not originate as many of the newest cultural trends as TikTok, but it gives creators and media companies a way to extend the reach and lifespan of their work.
Video, groups and monetization offerings make Facebook important to the business of content, particularly across established audiences and international markets.
Its continued scale is a reminder that relevance and distribution power aren’t always the same thing.
LinkedIn: The Rise of the Professional Creator
The map lists around 1.3 billion LinkedIn members, a member count rather than a comparable monthly-active-user metric.
Business leaders and entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson demonstrate how personal reputation travels on LinkedIn. But the platform’s interesting creator opportunity extends far beyond familiar names.
Industry experts build audiences by sharing useful analysis and firsthand experience, turning expertise into consulting, speaking, business development and professional relationships.
A smaller following of engaged decision-makers may generate more commercial value than a much larger audience of casual viewers. Here, credibility is a form of influence.
Snapchat: The Power of Everyday Connection
With around 900 million monthly active users on the map, Snapchat remains a distinctive part of the creator ecosystem.
Its identity is grounded in messaging, informal updates and mobile-first storytelling rather than polished public performance alone. For many creators, frequent unfiltered moments can foster a feeling of direct connection.
That suggests another way to understand affinity: audience loyalty can grow through recurring everyday interaction, even when individual posts don’t become broadly viral.
Reddit: Communities Are the Creators
With roughly 900 million monthly active users indicated on the map, Reddit demonstrates a model of influence built around participation rather than personal celebrity.
Subreddits devoted to entertainment, technology, gaming, sports and niche interests help shape conversations, recommendations and emerging trends. The cultural force is often the community itself, not a single account.
Reddit complicates the idea that every influential participant must be an influencer. Trust, contributions, moderation and community identity can generate collective power.
Twitch: Live Entertainment and Participatory Fandom
At approximately 150 million monthly active users according to the map, Twitch remains a central destination for real-time creator entertainment.
Streamers including Kai Cenat, Ninja and Pokimane show how live programming stretches beyond gaming into celebrity appearances, challenges and events.
Fans participate in the experience through chat, subscriptions and other live interactions. That makes Twitch a compelling example of how creators can turn recurring engagement into appointment-viewing entertainment.
Pinterest: Turning Inspiration Into Commerce
Pinterest is presented on the map with a figure of 975 million MAU. This unusually high figure should be checked against Pinterest’s latest published monthly-active-user reporting before publication.
Its role in the ecosystem is clear: content is organized around ideas that people want to save, try, make or purchase. Fashion, food, beauty and home design creators benefit from search-driven discovery and evergreen content.
Unlike fleeting entertainment feeds, Pinterest can connect inspiration to commercial intent long after an image is first posted.
Podcasts: The New Media Powerhouses
The map puts monthly podcast users at approximately 620 million. It also presents a platform breakdown that includes YouTube at 36%, Spotify at 22% and Apple at 12%, with smaller shares attributed to additional services; the underlying audience definition for these percentages should be included when available.
Shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience and Call Her Daddy illustrate the power of distinctive hosts and recurring relationships with listeners. Podcasting is increasingly a video business as well: full episodes, audio editions and social clips travel together.
Where short-form feeds compete for seconds, podcasts can earn an hour of someone’s attention. That familiarity supports sponsorships, subscriptions, live events and other creator businesses.
X: The Real-Time Influence Network
With roughly 550 million monthly active users represented on the map, X remains important in news, politics, sports and technology, even as estimates of its user base warrant caution.
Its strength is immediacy. Posts by journalists, public figures and business leaders can move conversations beyond the platform and into mainstream coverage.
But the distinction between exposure and trust is particularly sharp here. A widely circulated post may command attention without necessarily indicating sustained audience loyalty.
Substack and beehiiv: The Independent Publishing Economy
The 2026 map includes Substack at 35 million subscribers and beehiiv at 25 million subscribers. These subscription totals should not be confused with unique monthly platform users or paying subscribers.
Newsletters let writers, journalists and independent media personalities cultivate repeat relationships outside the fluctuations of algorithmic feeds. The format supports advertising, paid subscriptions and community-led media businesses.
This is a bigger shift than a return to email. It reflects creators seeking a direct line to their audiences and more control over distribution and monetization.
Patreon: When Fandom Becomes a Business Model
Patreon remains one of the clearest expressions of direct-to-fan monetization. The map lists about 10 million paid users and 65 million total members.
Podcasters, entertainers and educators offer membership benefits and exclusive content to audiences who choose to support them directly.
The model illustrates why loyal communities matter: a relatively small group of committed fans can make creative work financially sustainable without requiring the biggest follower count on the internet.
Smaller Platforms, Distinct Communities
Beyond the major social networks, the 2026 map also recognizes platforms serving more specific behaviors and communities, including Threads, Rumble, Kick, Vimeo and OnlyFans.
Threads, shown at approximately 500 million monthly active users, represents Meta’s growing text-based conversation network. Rumble, at roughly 57 million monthly active users on the map, offers another video publishing and distribution venue. Kick, shown at about 7 million active users, competes for live-streaming talent and audiences. Vimeo, with roughly 250 million monthly active users as labeled on the map, serves a different role through professional video hosting and creative workflows. OnlyFans, listed with 1.8 million paying fans on the graphic, highlights the continuing role of direct paid audience relationships, though that figure and its definition require verification.
These aren’t interchangeable businesses, and their reported audience metrics don’t necessarily describe the same thing. Their inclusion matters because it shows an increasingly fragmented creator economy, where distribution, live experiences, professional hosting, conversation and subscriptions each meet different needs.
Creators may build across several of these spaces rather than rely on one dominant platform. The opportunity is not always finding the largest audience; sometimes it’s finding the right one.
Indie Creators: A New Generation of Media Companies
One of the notable additions to this year’s map is a dedicated category for Indie Creators.
Independent creators increasingly operate like compact media companies, managing production, audience development, sponsorships and commerce under their own brands. Some specialize in expert knowledge; others cultivate entertainment formats or highly specific communities.
Their inclusion recognizes that cultural influence isn’t limited to the biggest accounts. A creator with a focused, responsive audience can build an enduring business without waiting for a network or studio to grant access.
Studios, Management & Distribution: Creator-Led Media Scales Up
The map features companies including Barstool Sports, Mythical, pocket.watch, Dhar Mann Studios, First We Feast, Filmhub and WatchMojo.
These companies illustrate the maturation of creator-led entertainment into production operations, intellectual-property businesses and distribution networks. Brands, traditional studios and digital-native companies increasingly collaborate around formats and audiences that originate online.
The line between a creator company and a traditional media company is becoming harder to draw, especially when both pursue recurring entertainment franchises, sponsorships, licensing and cross-platform reach.
Tools & Platforms: AI Is Rebuilding the Creative Workflow
The map’s tools category includes Adobe, Canva, CapCut, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Runway, Descript, ElevenLabs, Suno, Opus Clip and Perplexity, alongside platforms serving commerce, community and distribution.
AI is rapidly changing how creators research, write, edit, translate and produce content. Software that once required specialist teams is now increasingly accessible to individuals and smaller companies.
Other companies, including Shopify, Fourthwall, Discord, Circle and ManyChat, support the business functions around creation: audience relationships, customer communication and monetization.
As the mechanics of making content become more accessible, creative judgment, originality and earned audience trust become more important differentiators.
Agencies & Media: Connecting Creators to the Broader Economy
The 2026 map charts representation, marketing and media companies such as CAA, WME, Viral Nation, NeoReach and Whalar.
Their work goes beyond negotiating an occasional brand deal. Agencies increasingly support intellectual-property development, partnerships, licensing, consumer businesses and long-term commercial strategy.
For marketers, the map’s AQ approach offers a useful additional lens. Reach remains important, but the responsiveness of an audience may help explain why a smaller creator can be a better fit for a particular brand.
Creators are becoming studios. Studios are becoming platforms. Platforms are expanding into commerce. AI tools are reshaping production. And independent talent is competing with traditional media companies for the same audiences.
Across these changes, one idea stands out: audience size alone doesn’t tell the full story of influence.
A creator with millions of followers may command enormous visibility, while a smaller creator with a deeply invested community may generate extraordinary loyalty and commercial value.
The Creator Ecosphere is no longer a side industry. It’s a global media infrastructure connecting technology, creativity, entertainment, community and commerce.
The next generation of winners may be determined not simply by who has the largest following, but by who builds the strongest relationships with it.
Methodology & How to Read the Map
Platform Scale: The graphic uses monthly active users, members, paid subscribers and other measures depending on the platform. These figures are not all directly comparable; several should be independently verified against public company reporting before publication.
Affinity Quotient (AQ): AQ considers likes, comments, shares and views, weighting active signals such as shares more heavily. The graphic describes the calculation as (likes + comments + shares × 2) ÷ views, with 0–100 grades comparing creators within the same platform using median post activity over a 60-day period.
Coverage: AQ applies only to platforms where sufficient publicly available engagement data exists. Other sections use follower, subscriber or participation measures appropriate to each service.
Source Notes: The map credits a wide range of third-party sources and records its data as of September 2026. Children’s feeds and accounts with insufficient qualifying posts may receive AQ N/A.
Editorial checks before publishing: Confirm Pinterest MAU, Vimeo and OnlyFans metric definitions, newsletter subscribers, podcast share definitions, and other platform audience figures; ensure the event is described in the appropriate tense for the publication date.
An ESHAP × What’s Trending collaboration. Powered by Foam. Partnered with Whalar Group.
