The Creator Economy Map
How attention becomes brand partnerships, owned products, retail shelves, factories, jobs and places, 2005 to 2026, with the failures mapped at the same standing as the successes.
Companion to the interactive map and the node and edge dataset
574 creators, companies, brands, places and funds · 801 connections · 5 layers · 28 metros
Version 1.3.3. Data current through September 2026. Activity after that date is described as announced or scheduled, never as completed.
Value moves, and it leaves a trail
What the nodes and lines mean, the five layers, the three weights of connection and why failures stand equal to successes.
Six rungs from attention to a local economy
The six rungs every complete path shares, with MrBeast, Prime, Michelle Phan, Emma Chamberlain, Dude Perfect and the Sidemen as the worked cases.
The MCN era and what replaced it
Maker, Fullscreen, Machinima and Defy, the buyers who paid for them, and the agencies, management firms and tools that replaced the network model.
Where the rungs break
Each layer has a characteristic failure, and every closed, dissolved, bankrupt or wound down node names the rung that broke.
Where the goods, jobs and events land
Where the goods, jobs and events physically land, metro by metro, which is rarely where the creator lives.
What a city can capture
The local capture metric, the failure mode matrix and what a city can do at each rung.
The manufacturing and retail rungs, edge by edge
Every manufacturing and retail placement edge on the map, listed edge by edge.
Confidence, dates and sources
Confidence, source tiers, timing types, timeline placement and the flagged discrepancies.
Index of nodes
Every node on the map by layer and year of entry, each with its own entry page.
The same text is available as a PDF reference or on one page, generated from the same data file as these pages and the map, so the counts never disagree.