Date-Me Docs and Subway Sessions

"addicted to never serving"

David Hockney painted Harry Styles for the National Portrait Gallery; Taylor Swift paid out $55 million in bonuses to her tour staff; and NewJeans beat out the Barbie soundtrack on the Billboard charts.

PINTEREST CEO ON USER GROWTH: ‘GEN Z IS OUR FASTEST-GROWING COHORT’, cnbc
Here’s your quarterly reminder that Pinterest is actually very popular among Gen Z, despite its reputation — in my mind! — for being a platform for, like, boomers who knit. Not only was it the platform’s best user growth quarter in more than two years, but Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that “Gen Z is our fastest-growing cohort, and they’re engaging more deeply than prior cohorts.”

MILLENNIALS & GEN Z'S THIRST FOR COLD DRINKS IS BOOSTING STARBUCKS' BOTTOM, yahoofinance
Beverage sales grew by 10% in the quarter, and 75% of its U.S. beverage sales were from the sale of cold drinks — and according to Starbucks’ CEO, that’s largely because of young spenders: “We have a large consumer base of millennials and Gen Z, and their tastes and preferences tend to be more cold.” Further, customizations like cold foam "contribute to over $1 billion in revenue annually."

TIRED OF DATING APPS, SOME TURN TO ‘DATE-ME DOCS’, nyt
The popularity of “date-me docs” — long, résumé-like dating bios reminiscent of personal ads from the past — among young singles comes amid signs of people experiencing burnout from dating apps. Notably, the top dating apps saw a slump in user growth last year, according to a Morgan Stanley report. (Fwiw, this date-me doc “trend” seems to mostly exist among millennials who work in tech — many of them use Notion, which is telling.)

MALE BEAUTY’S NEXT GROWTH ENGINE: DOUYIN, jing
The male makeup tutorial has gone viral on Douyin, ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok, which is translating to big sales in male skincare and cosmetics. Data shows that in the first half of 2023, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of men’s makeup sold via Douyin surged 365 percent year on year – Tmall and Taobao combined achieved 6.7 percent growth in the same period.

MEET SEPHORA SOUNDS, A NEW MUSIC COLLECTIVE, wwd
Because TikTok doesn’t allow companies to use songs for promotional or commercial purposes, the program — a collective of up-and-coming musical artists whose songs will be featured in the company’s TikTok videos — allows Sephora to lawfully put tracks to use on the platform.

THE ALGORITHM CHOSE @SUBWAYSESSIONS. WE ASKED HER OUR BURNING QUESTIONS, thecut
Danya Issawi interviewed Kristina Avakyan, the girl whose unhinged outfits — a sheer lace onesie with orange basketball shorts and fuchsia heels; swimsuit bottoms and a hoodie — recorded while waiting for the 6 train have been going viral on TikTok and Twitter this week.

One last thought: