Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The great Tokyo gamble.

• Our favorite interior designers…for rescuing boring offices. 

• Billionaire nerd buys The Onion, thinks he can solve media’s problems (yes, we’re serious!). 

• Plus: Yo-Yo Ma, Apple and global politics; a videogame legend’s unexpected new work; and Michael Douglas as our nation’s original nerd-preneur.

Honestly, politics are only one of TikTok’s problems. Assuming the ban bill stands (after the expected lawsuit from TikTok and its users), and someone does buy the platform, the new owner will acquire a site with several long-standing flaws it hasn’t done as much to fix as I might’ve expected: Creators still can’t earn very much through TikTok directly—or through their TikTok followings. That means those creators are tempted to flee to other platforms.

Unlike YouTube, eight-year-old TikTok has never shared any meaningful ad revenue with creators, and since fame is far more fleeting on TikTok than on other sites, TikTokers have trouble convincing brands they’re worth sponsoring. “Short-form–video creators just have not historically experienced the same type of sticky audience that long-form talent does,” said Creative Artists Agency’s Andrew Graham, who represents a number of influencers, including TikTok heartthrob Noah Beck, and advises clients across CAA on digital media and partnerships. “That makes it more difficult for TikTok and shortform creators to drive their audiences off-platform.”

Instagram doesn’t do a good job of sharing ad revenue, either. But creators who build large followings on Instagram have a much better shot of landing lucrative brand deals: Audiences on Instagram tend to be more enduring, since the app’s core content feed works differently from TikTok’s. Instagram focuses on showing users content from creators they already know and follow. TikTok, of course, specializes in constantly introducing users to new creators.

Until now, TikTok’s pop-culture standing has helped it keep creators, and it does very much need creators to stay put, since they’re the ones who make the content that attracts users. But the brand’s cool factor has faded, and better earning opportunities for creators exist elsewhere—a tough combination of factors for prospective new owners.  

So here’s what should happen the day such an owner takes over TikTok: The app should launch a program for ad revenue sharing that credibly competes with YouTube’s. “How do you really incentivize talent? Share the revenue, share the money,” Graham said. “I don’t think it’s a particularly polarizing perspective.” In addition, Graham argues, TikTok needs to go as aggressively into longer videos as Instagram and YouTube moved into shorter content with Shorts and Reels. (TikTok has taken some initial steps in that direction.) That’s because even if TikTok begins to generously share ad revenue from short-form videos, it’ll still be much less than the ad revenue a creator could earn making longer videos on YouTube.

These are changes TikTok should’ve made years ago—I’d argue before it undertook its push into shopping, since the site cannot exist in any form if creators steadily jump ship. And they’re obvious moves for anyone hoping to rejuvenate TikTok after politicians have spent months pelting the brand with cow pies.

Abram Brown, editor of The Information’s Weekend section, is already off running through Sheep Meadow with a kite, Ben Franklin style. Nonetheless, you’ll still be able to reach him at [email protected] or find him on X.

The Big Read

Japan’s New Appetite for Risk Lures Venture Investors to Tokyo

When I last visited San Francisco a month or so ago, I took myself out to dinner in Russian Hill—at Lord Stanley, which is worth a visit—and as often happens when I’m traveling solo, I spent half the meal reading a book, half eavesdropping. It’s no exaggeration when I estimate hearing three separate conversations from as many neighboring tables—all talking about recent trips to Japan. (As a veteran eavesdropper, I’ll say topics from overheard dining-room conversations are seldom so uniform.) 

Some of their travel undoubtedly was personal. The yen’s weak, and even in March the skiing is great—as fine as you’ll find anywhere in the world if you go to places like Niseko and Hakuba. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover some portion of their time in Japan involved business: As our latest Big Read explains, Japan is shaping up to be one of the most important places in tech for 2024, spurred by the Japanese government’s decision to finally learn to love U.S. venture capital and its eagerness to seize the opportunity offered by the unfolding artificial intelligence era. 

“They missed out on software; there is definitely an undertone of ‘We don’t want to miss out on the AI wave,’” said Jon Chu, a Khosla Ventures partner who led the firm’s investment in Sakana. “You have to have a large enough market, and Japan is the world’s third-largest economy. If you become the OpenAI of Japan, you are not as valuable as OpenAI in the U.S., but you are still pretty damn valuable.”

The Top 5

Our Favorite Interior Designers...for Rescuing a Boring Office

Whether by choice or by force, we’re all back in the office more these days, and startups and big corporations alike are reconsidering how their headquarters should look and feel. Our Annie Goldsmith has put together some suggestions on who to call when you’re ready to transform that HQ from a sterile glass spaceship—so 2010s!—into something more welcoming and comfortable, since, as Simon Ovadia from Ovadio Bros. pointed out, “Your environment sets your tone, it sets the mood, it sets your energy.”

Media

Twilio Cofounder Jeff Lawson Has Serious Plans for The Onion

Like many people online on Thursday afternoon, I thought for a second it was a gag before accepting it wasn’t: Jeff Lawson, the founder and former CEO of Twilio—yes, that Jeff Lawson—was the guy buying The Onion from its current hapless owner, G/O Media. 

Since leaving Twilio in January after a bruising battle with activist investors, he’s determined to enjoy life and determined to revitalize a brand that he has long loved. “The Onion is designed to make us think. It’s designed to make us laugh. It should not be a place for us to go look at belly fat ads,” Lawson said.

Listening: A Bridge to Beijing

“As someone who is of Chinese origin, am I considered one of them—am I other? I’m not sure where I fit in or where people want me to fit in,” cellist Yo-Yo Ma admits in the most recent episode of “Face-Off: The U.S. vs China,” a new podcast co-hosted by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jane Perlez. 

“Face-Off” takes a broad view of its mission to explore the ties, rivalries and battles between the superpowers as they play out in politics, business and, as in Ma’s case, culture. Perlez is a capable host, making the most of her time covering China for The New York Times during the rise of Xi Jingping. In that role she met people like Apple CEO Tim Cook, initially connecting with him at a State Department luncheon. In a particularly worthwhile episode that includes an interview with our Wayne Ma, Perlez examines Apple’s place in China and how Cook has expertly played his role as a “charming diplomat.”—A.B.

Reading: Memoirs From Videogame Royalty 

Nearly all of the work by multihyphenate artist Jordan Mechner, who developed the Prince of Persia videogame series, involves a meditation on the concept of time. In the first Prince of Persia game from 1989, for instance, players have an hour to save the sultan’s princess from an evil vizier. “Time does seem to be a constant for me,” Mechner said from his home in southern France. “It’s showing that the past is present, that the things we experience now may have echoes of things that have happened in the past or will make echoes in the future. We’re never just living in one moment. We’re living in multiple timelines simultaneously.”

His latest project, “Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family,” is no different. The autobiographical graphic novel, which Mechner wrote and illustrated, weaves together three interconnected stories: his creative obsessions, his father’s journey as a Jewish refugee in Europe and his grandfather’s experience as a conscripted soldier in World War I’s front lines. “Replay” will recall other memoir-based graphic novels done as high literature, such as Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” and Guy Delisle’s “Jerusalem,” and Mechner’s images convey a remarkable combination of whimsy and pathos. It’s a pity, really, that he gave up his first love—comics—to pursue the one he found later, designing games. 

With war in the Middle East and a new refugee crisis worsening, the subject matter in “Replay” feels especially timely. “If there’s one meaning that I hope people will come away with from ‘Replay,’ it is: To categorize people because of some generality—ethnicity, nationality—is to miss their humanity,” Mechner said. “Every individual is complex and connected to other people. Our actions have impacts through time: An act of cruelty or kindness or generosity has impacts through the generations, more than we can appreciate in one lifetime.”—A.B. 

Watching: A Charming Old Blunderbuss

Gordon Gecko, Liberace—Ben Franklin! I’ll watch Michael Douglas play a famous American any day, and, true to form, the Oscar winner provides the life-generating electricity for Apple+’s “Franklin,” which focuses on the Founding Father’s diplomatic mission to secure a French alliance during the Revolutionary War. Like everything on Apple+, the show gleams, making the most of a production budget—the wigs, the balls, the palaces—that obviously could’ve ransomed a king or three. 

Some of the best moments for Douglas, 79, come when he shares the screen with Noah Jupe (“A Quiet Place”), 19, who plays his grandson, Temple. I particularly enjoyed a midseason moment where Douglas is the gruff editor to Jupe’s eager writer as they plan the publication of their latest—well, newsletter. Plus ça change...—A.B.

Final Thought

Who needs an AI translator when there’s Mariko-sama?