Chris Stokel-Walker - Böcker

The internet is everywhere. But how did it start? How has it changed? And what will it look like in the future?No development in human history has changed the world as radically, or as quickly, as the advent of the internet. There’s almost no aspect of 21st-century life that it hasn’t shaped or fundamentally altered, for better or for worse. But the history of the internet is longer than you might think. Its foundations stretch as far back as the 1960s, decades before it would become an accessible and inescapable part of everyday life.In this new entry in the bestselling Bite-Sized Chunks series, author and journalist Chris Stokel-Walker traces the internet from its (relatively) humble beginnings to the ubiquitous force that exists today, from email and dial-up to social media and the metaverse. Breaking down complex concepts around how the world wide web works, how it has changed over time, and the effects it has had on the world as we know it, as well as explaining key terminology and spotlighting important figures, The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks explains everything you need

More than 100 YouTube insiders spoke to the author 'Absorbing and highly illuminating' – The Bookseller'A must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the future of media' – MEL MagazineYouTube didn’t just disrupt television — it quietly reinvented fame, creativity, advertising, and power itself. YouTubers by Chris Stokel‑Walker is the definitive, deeply reported account of how a scrappy video‑sharing website became one of the most influential cultural forces of the 21st century, creating a new generation of stars, entrepreneurs, and global media brands.From the very first shaky upload to today’s billion‑view channels, YouTubers explores how ordinary people turned cameras on themselves and built vast audiences, lucrative businesses, and devoted fan communities. Through vivid storytelling and behind‑the‑scenes access, Stokel‑Walker follows the rise of vloggers, gamers, pranksters, beauty creators, child stars, and influencers — and reveals what success on YouTube really costs. This is not just a book about internet celebrities. It is a sharp, authoritative guide to the creator economy, unpacking how YouTube actually works: the algorithm that decides what goes viral, the metrics that govern visibility, and the hidden systems that reward some creators while quietly burying others. You’ll learn how watch time, recommended videos, monetisation, demonetisation, and brand safety shape online video — and why creators are often forced to adapt at breakneck speed just to survive. YouTubers also examines the business of influence. As traditional advertising faltered, brands moved to YouTube, fuelling the rise of influencer marketing, sponsored content, and creator‑led brand deals. The book explains how creators make money through ads, partnerships, merchandise, Patreon, and live events — and why relying on any single revenue stream can be dangerously unstable. The “Adpocalypse,” burnout, and platform crackdowns expose the fragile reality behind the glamour. Crucially, the book doesn’t shy away from YouTube’s darker side. It investigates extremism, conspiracy content, children’s programming scandals, and the ethical challenges of algorithmic recommendation at scale. As YouTube grows more powerful, YouTubers asks urgent questions about responsibility, regulation, and what happens when a private platform becomes the world’s most influential broadcaster. Inside, you’ll discover: How YouTube’s algorithm and recommendation system shape culture and attention The rise of vloggers, influencers, and internet celebrities How monetisation, ads, sponsorships, and brand deals really work Why burnout, authenticity, and parasocial relationships define creator life The global expansion of YouTube across languages, countries, and cultures The battle between YouTube, traditional TV, Facebook, and emerging platforms Written with clarity, insight, and narrative drive, YouTubers is essential reading for content creators, marketers, entrepreneurs, media students, parents, and anyone curious about internet culture and digital media. If you want to understand how YouTube reshaped entertainment — and what that means for the future of creativity, influence, and power — this book is your indispensable guide.Reviews'No one understands the intricacies of YouTube like Chris Stokel-Walker. His reporting on the platform and its creators has been groundbreaking and unparalleled.' – Taylor Lorenz, The Atlantic 'For anyone trying to understand the bonkers world of YouTube, this is essential reading. Full of entertaining dispatches from the front line of streaming, Stokel-Walker has written the preeminent guide to the new celebrity world - and what it means for the rest of us.' – Sam Parker, Esquire 'Brilliant, witty and extraordinary... This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to truly understand the future of media, as well as the internet itself.' – Hussein Kesvani, MEL Magazine 'If you want to understand the inner workings of your favourite YouTube influencers, or perhaps if you want to understand why your children are always talking about them, you should read this book. It is smart, sweeping, and significant.' – Simon Clark, YouTuber About the AuthorChris Stokel-Walker is a British journalist whose work regularly appears in WIRED, The Economist and Newsweek. He is known for breaking major news about social media and often reports on YouTube and TikTok for television, radio and podcasts. For YouTubers he travelled around the world, speaking to behind-the-camera producers and powerbrokers, including creators KSI, Hank and John Green and Emma Blackery. His follow-up books are TikTok Boom and How AI Ate the World, both published by Canbury Press.First Chapter Extract Jake Paul: cars, money and a burning swimming pool Make your way the 100 metres or so up the gated driveway of a mountainside home in California and your eye is drawn to the rust-coloured statue in the middle of the front yard. Cast in metal, a stick man holds up four large boxes that appear to be toppling out of reach. Look left and you’ll see a newly installed skate ramp on the front lawn. To the right of that you’ll see the dirt ramp where the owner jumps his luxury cars, among them a Lamborghini Huracán Performante, a Tesla Model X P-100 D (nicknamed Bloodshark), and a tie-dyed Ford Focus RS called Rainbro. But don’t get distracted by the flashy motors and the general hullabaloo taking place in the grounds of this three-and-a-half acre property. Otherwise you’ll miss the 15,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom mansion, which has a custom-designed fish tank in the master bedroom and a ‘merchandise shop’ (which the public can’t visit) showcasing a custom line of T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts. The owner of this $6.9 million mansion is a high school dropout with a short attention span. A decade ago Jake Paul might have been consigned to a low-wage future scanning groceries in a supermarket in his native Ohio. Instead, he is the modern face of YouTube; a boisterous millionaire with a frenetic lifestyle and a booming business. His story shows how YouTube is throwing jokers into the pack of modern media...Buy the book and start reading

More than 100 YouTube insiders spoke to the author 'Absorbing and highly illuminating' – The Bookseller'A must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the future of media' – MEL MagazineYouTube didn’t just disrupt television — it quietly reinvented fame, creativity, advertising, and power itself. YouTubers by Chris Stokel‑Walker is the definitive, deeply reported account of how a scrappy video‑sharing website became one of the most influential cultural forces of the 21st century, creating a new generation of stars, entrepreneurs, and global media brands.From the very first shaky upload to today’s billion‑view channels, YouTubers explores how ordinary people turned cameras on themselves and built vast audiences, lucrative businesses, and devoted fan communities. Through vivid storytelling and behind‑the‑scenes access, Stokel‑Walker follows the rise of vloggers, gamers, pranksters, beauty creators, child stars, and influencers — and reveals what success on YouTube really costs. This is not just a book about internet celebrities. It is a sharp, authoritative guide to the creator economy, unpacking how YouTube actually works: the algorithm that decides what goes viral, the metrics that govern visibility, and the hidden systems that reward some creators while quietly burying others. You’ll learn how watch time, recommended videos, monetisation, demonetisation, and brand safety shape online video — and why creators are often forced to adapt at breakneck speed just to survive. YouTubers also examines the business of influence. As traditional advertising faltered, brands moved to YouTube, fuelling the rise of influencer marketing, sponsored content, and creator‑led brand deals. The book explains how creators make money through ads, partnerships, merchandise, Patreon, and live events — and why relying on any single revenue stream can be dangerously unstable. The “Adpocalypse,” burnout, and platform crackdowns expose the fragile reality behind the glamour. Crucially, the book doesn’t shy away from YouTube’s darker side. It investigates extremism, conspiracy content, children’s programming scandals, and the ethical challenges of algorithmic recommendation at scale. As YouTube grows more powerful, YouTubers asks urgent questions about responsibility, regulation, and what happens when a private platform becomes the world’s most influential broadcaster. Inside, you’ll discover: How YouTube’s algorithm and recommendation system shape culture and attention The rise of vloggers, influencers, and internet celebrities How monetisation, ads, sponsorships, and brand deals really work Why burnout, authenticity, and parasocial relationships define creator life The global expansion of YouTube across languages, countries, and cultures The battle between YouTube, traditional TV, Facebook, and emerging platforms Written with clarity, insight, and narrative drive, YouTubers is essential reading for content creators, marketers, entrepreneurs, media students, parents, and anyone curious about internet culture and digital media. If you want to understand how YouTube reshaped entertainment — and what that means for the future of creativity, influence, and power — this book is your indispensable guide.Reviews'No one understands the intricacies of YouTube like Chris Stokel-Walker. His reporting on the platform and its creators has been groundbreaking and unparalleled.' – Taylor Lorenz, The Atlantic 'For anyone trying to understand the bonkers world of YouTube, this is essential reading. Full of entertaining dispatches from the front line of streaming, Stokel-Walker has written the preeminent guide to the new celebrity world - and what it means for the rest of us.' – Sam Parker, Esquire 'Brilliant, witty and extraordinary... This is a must-read book for anyone who wants to truly understand the future of media, as well as the internet itself.' – Hussein Kesvani, MEL Magazine 'If you want to understand the inner workings of your favourite YouTube influencers, or perhaps if you want to understand why your children are always talking about them, you should read this book. It is smart, sweeping, and significant.' – Simon Clark, YouTuber About the AuthorChris Stokel-Walker is a British journalist whose work regularly appears in WIRED, The Economist and Newsweek. He is known for breaking major news about social media and often reports on YouTube and TikTok for television, radio and podcasts. For YouTubers he travelled around the world, speaking to behind-the-camera producers and powerbrokers, including creators KSI, Hank and John Green and Emma Blackery. His follow-up books are TikTok Boom and How AI Ate the World, both published by Canbury Press.First Chapter Extract Jake Paul: cars, money and a burning swimming pool Make your way the 100 metres or so up the gated driveway of a mountainside home in California and your eye is drawn to the rust-coloured statue in the middle of the front yard. Cast in metal, a stick man holds up four large boxes that appear to be toppling out of reach. Look left and you’ll see a newly installed skate ramp on the front lawn. To the right of that you’ll see the dirt ramp where the owner jumps his luxury cars, among them a Lamborghini Huracán Performante, a Tesla Model X P-100 D (nicknamed Bloodshark), and a tie-dyed Ford Focus RS called Rainbro. But don’t get distracted by the flashy motors and the general hullabaloo taking place in the grounds of this three-and-a-half acre property. Otherwise you’ll miss the 15,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom mansion, which has a custom-designed fish tank in the master bedroom and a ‘merchandise shop’ (which the public can’t visit) showcasing a custom line of T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts. The owner of this $6.9 million mansion is a high school dropout with a short attention span. A decade ago Jake Paul might have been consigned to a low-wage future scanning groceries in a supermarket in his native Ohio. Instead, he is the modern face of YouTube; a boisterous millionaire with a frenetic lifestyle and a booming business. His story shows how YouTube is throwing jokers into the pack of modern media...Buy the book and start reading

Fast-paced business book that explains TikTok 'It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller – this one does.' – Azeem Azhar, Exponential View'A must-read for students, scholars, and policymakers.' – David Craig, Professor, USC Annenberg TikTok didn’t just arrive — it detonated. In a handful of years, a short‑video app from ByteDance, a Chinese tech company few people outside the industry had heard of, surged past entrenched platforms and reshaped what the internet looks like: how we watch, how we shop, how music breaks, how language evolves, and how fame is manufactured at scale. In TikTok Boom, journalist Chris Stokel‑Walker takes you behind the screen to reveal how the world’s favourite app became a global force. This is the rare business and technology story that reads with the pace of a thriller —because the stakes are real. TikTok isn’t only entertainment; it’s a platform powered by an astonishing recommendation algorithm, a fast‑moving creator economy, and a company operating at the centre of an East‑meets‑West superpower contest. Whether you’re a creator trying to go viral, a marketer building a smarter social media strategy, a founder studying product growth, or simply curious about how your “For You” page seems to know you better than you do, TikTok Boom is your essential guide to understanding what makes TikTok tick — and why it matters for culture, commerce, and power. What you’ll discover inside: The origin story: how TikTok evolved, scaled, and outmanoeuvred rivals in the attention war. The engine under the scroll: how TikTok’s algorithm, data signals, and feedback loops shape what you see—minute by minute—and why it feels so addictive. The new rules of influence: how trends are engineered, remixed, and amplified, and how creators turn seconds of video into careers. TikTok for business, without the buzzwords: what brands can learn from the platform’s style of storytelling, community, and discovery. The hidden hand of moderation: content guidelines, enforcement, and the subtle ways they can change what becomes visible (and what disappears). The ByteDance ambition: the people who built the machine, the company culture behind it, and the friction that followed as TikTok expanded worldwide. The geopolitical tension around Chinese tech: scrutiny, bans, and political flashpoints that turned a social app into an international headline. Stokel‑Walker draws on deep reporting and interviews with people connected to TikTok — from company insiders to creators in front of the camera — bringing clarity to the myths, controversies, and hype. You’ll come away with a sharper understanding of why TikTok feels different from Instagram, YouTube, or Snapchat; why “going viral” on TikTok follows a distinct logic; and how algorithmic discovery has changed the value of followers, fame, and attention. And because this is written by a journalist — not a hype merchant — you’ll also see the bigger picture: how platforms police speech, how algorithms can quietly reshape culture, and why a seemingly “fun” app has become a battleground for influence and trust. Praise for TikTok Boom:“It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller – this one does.” — Azeem Azhar, Exponential View“Vital to understanding how TikTok works and the impact it’s having.” — Damian Collins MP This isn’t a “get followers overnight” handbook. It’s something far more useful: a sophisticated, readable explanation of the system underneath the scroll. By the final page, you’ll understand why TikTok’s design is so persuasive, what its rise signals about the future of social media and digital marketing, and how the next era of online influence will be fought — by creators, corporations, and governments alike. If you want to understand TikTok beyond the trends — how it works, why it wins, and what it means for culture and commerce — TikTok Boom belongs on your shelf. Scroll up and start reading today.

'It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller - this one does.' - Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View'Vital to understanding how[TikTok] works and the impact it's having.' - Damian Collins MP, former chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee 'TikTok Boom is a must read for students, scholars, and policy makers.' - David Craig, Clinical Professor, USC AnnenbergTikTok is the new force in social media. Just a few years after its launch, TikTok has one billion accounts.Every day hundreds of millions of teenagers are gripped by its brief videos, powered by a secretive algorithm that can propel a meme or or a user or a product to global stardom within minutes. Multi-national businesses are scrambling to harness its raw marketing power.TikTok is a cultural hurricane, making instant hits of new and long-fogotten songs, books and TV shows, and a constant political and social commentary, playing out every minute of the day in tens of millions of videos.TikTok is also the first app outside the United States to challenge Silicon Valley's dominance of social media. Aware of the Chinese app's challenge to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok. TikTok is already banned in India.TikTok Boom reveals how TikTok has spread exponentially in the West since its launch in 2017. Its owner, ByteDance, wants to become China's answer to Google and has rolled out TikTok using smart tactics revealed for the first time in the book.Using a range of sources deep inside and outside ByteDance, TikTok Boom reveals the story of its founder Yiming Zhang and its origin in another app in China, Douyin. It follows the social media battle between short-form video apps and TikTok's final triumph after its merger with Musical.ly. It offers never-before-seen insights into TikTok's new influencer ecosystem. And it charts the increasing superpower tech rivalry between China and the West which is posing questions about TikTok's safety.TikTok Boom's author Chris Stokel-Walker has interviewed scores of people connected to the world's hottest app, including current and former employees, and some of TikTok's biggest names in front of and behind the lens. He explores the culture of ByteDance and finds out what has happened to its founder, Yiming Zhang, as the Chinese Communist Party seeks to reel in the country's runaway tech industry.TikTok Boom is a nuanced, informed and incisive read on the characters and strategies behind the world's new tech order, in a gripping read that has won plaudits from technologists. It's rich peopled with characters. TikTok Boom is the essential book for anyone who wants to know what TikTok's success means for culture, technology, geopolitics, marketing and advertising.Find out where TikTok came from and where it's going. Find out how TikTok Works and whether it can work for you.Reviews'A careful, detailed teardown of the people, culture and technology behind the world's most dynamic social network. It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller - this one does.' - Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View'It's clear that Stokel-Walker's strength is that he's not just TikTok-literate, he's TikTok-fluent. He knows the product, the people, and the entire ecosystem inside and out, and it is this familiarity that makes his telling so compelling, because he knows how to make you feel like you, too, are an insider in this strange new world.' - Rui Ma, founder, Tech Buzz China'Blending journalistic narrative with state-of-the-art academic research, no other author comes close to weaving this epic tale of the rise of China's first global platform threatening Silicon's Valley hegemony while operating as inflection point around the rise of one globe two Internet systems. This is a must read for students, scholars, and policy makers.' - David Craig, Clinical Professor, USC Annenberg'This book charts the story of an app on the rise that's changing the world of tech, charting the future of culture, and creating a new world of work: the creator economy... it breaks down some of the biggest questions for the future of work and culture.' - Li Jin, Atelier VenturesExtract: ByteDanceAsk most people what ByteDance is and they'll likely meet you with a blank stare. Yet it is the owner of TikTok and a host of other world-leading apps. Founded in March 2012, it's worth about $180 billion - up from its $75 billion in 2018 when the Japanese technology investors SoftBank Group bought into the company. Despite the fact that its apps are used by two billion people worldwide, earning it $34 billion in revenue in 2020, ByteDance deliberately keeps a low profile among the general public in the West. It wants its products to take centre stage.It's a strategy devised by its low-key, but intensely-driven founder, Yiming Zhang. Whereas his fellow Chinese rival, Musical.ly's Alex Zhu, is creative and flighty, Zhang is measured and focussed. Compared to his more brash counterparts in China, such as Jack Ma, the former boss of Alibaba Group, who's known for his exuberance and outgoing personality, he is even a little dull. Considered. He practises 'delayed gratification.' He's rational - though his choice of clothing, T-shirts and jeans, makes him more laid back than the average Chinese executive. Imagine the slightly underwhelming disappointment of Mark Zuckerberg, rather than the zany pinball personality of Elon Musk.Born in 1983 in the city of Longyan in the coastal province of Fujian that's known for having the highest proportion of emigrants to the Western world in all of China, Zhang is, however, fiercely independent. While many people entering China's tech sector are comfortable to land a job at one of the pre-existing Chinese tech giants, Zhang ignored that route. He was not after the quick buzz of instant success by piggybacking onto a pre-existing victor: he played the long game.Buy the book to carry on reading