DUBAI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Nas Summit, compared by its organizers to the Davos for international content creators, concluded its first edition on Saturday in Dubai, where participants urge social media content creators, especially influencers producing short-form content, to assume responsibility for bigger positive impact in society.
"The format is getting shorter and shorter. The attention span is getting shorter ... We were going from two-hour videos, to 20-minute videos, to one-minute videos," Nuseir Yassin, organizer of the three-day summit as CEO of Nas Academy and creator of Nas Daily, told Xinhua.
"I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow we end up with a six-second video," the Israeli-born Arab vlogger noted.
Yassin rose to fame for posting one minute-long video on a daily basis for 1,000 days in a row under the Facebook page Nas Daily (Nas means people in Arabic). He now has more than 48 million followers across all social media platforms.
In addition to creating videos, he also teaches content through his Nas Academy, an online digital learning platform launched in 2020.
Despite being a beneficiary of social media and content creation, Yassin has warned against the social risks they may bring along without proper guidance.
"The more crazy you are, the more views you get. That's a fundamental problem right now with algorithms. We need to fix that," he explained.
"Social media has destroyed many lives and has also made many lives better, but we need to make it less polarized," the organizer added, citing the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine as "a complicated topic."
Qupanuk Olsen, another content creator who runs a YouTube channel called Q's Greenland that posts short videos about everyday life on the island, expressed contentment about spreading happiness to the rest of the world through his videos.
"I make videos very excited, happy so it's very important for me to share positivity to the rest of the world as well," Olsen said.
Jordan Matter, an American photographer and author of several best-selling books, also highlighted the social responsibility a creator should take.
"Everybody should be aware of their role and responsibility," said Matter, who has a social media following of more than 18.3 million. "We have a responsibility to do everything we possibly can to make the world a better place."
Running from March 17-19, the Nas Summit gathered some of the world's most followed content creators, including 50 speakers and 700 attendees, to discuss the right way to monetize and develop content creation.
According to the 2021 Creator Economy Report by the Influencer Marketing Factory, more than 50 million people consider themselves content creators, of whom over 2 million consider themselves professional ones. ■
