Eight-year-old Ryan Kaji earned US$26 million this year on his YouTube channel, making him the highest-paid creator on the platform, according to a list published on Wednesday by Forbes magazine.
Kaji, whose real name is Ryan Guan, was already the video platform’s highest earner last year, with US$22 million, Forbes said.
His channel, “Ryan’s World,” launched in 2015 by his parents, is only three years old, but already has 22.9 million subscribers.
Initially called “Ryan Toys
Review,” it mostly consisted of “unboxing” videos — videos of the young star opening boxes of toys and playing with them.
A number of the videos have racked up more than 1 billion views, and the channel has received almost 35 billion views since its creation, according to data from the analytics Web site Social Blade.
Recently, the channel was renamed after a consumer advocacy organization, Truth in Advertising, filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about it.
Truth in Advertising accused the channel of not clearly denoting which videos had been sponsored, meaning brands paid for the channel to feature their products.
The channel has also evolved as Ryan ages, now offering more educational videos in addition to the toys.
In Forbes’ ranking, Ryan Kaji surpassed the channel “Dude Perfect,” run by a group of friends from Texas who attempt seemingly impossible feats, such as launching basketballs into hoops from the tops of buildings or out of helicopters.
“Dude Perfect” came in second, up from third the year before, having earned US$20 million from June 1 last year to June 1 this year.
In third place was another child star’s channel, Russian Anastasia Radzinskaya. At only five years old, she earned US$18 million.
Her channels — “Like Nastya Vlog” and “Funny Stacy” — boast nearly 70 million subscribers in total, with videos in Russian, English and Spanish.
At the beginning of September, YouTube’s parent company, Google, agreed to pay a US$170 million fine after the FTC accused the Internet giant of collecting personal data from child YouTube users without permission.
The platform used the data to ensure that advertisers were able to target children, the FTC said.
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS