Wesley Castellanos
Features & opinion
Wesley Castellanos writes long-form features and opinion for the desk, focused on where the field is heading next. He works across beats and is the only reporter on staff with a standing license to argue a thesis in print. His features run long; his opinion pieces run sharp.
Meta's Muse Agent Launches, and Small Merchants Face a New Gatekeeper
Meta's new personal AI agent will discover, compare, and buy on consumers' behalf across Gmail, Shopify, and Stripe's Link — turning storefront legibility into the next distribution question for small B2C businesses.
X's Original Content Rewards Program Goes Live Today, Reshaping the Small-Business Content Calendar
Starting September 8, X replaces Revenue Sharing with a program that pays creators only for original posts and uses AI-era enforcement to strip out reposts, aggregation, and minimally modified content.
AI is now the third-biggest way consumers find local businesses. Most owners are invisible.
BrightLocal's 2026 survey clocks AI-tool usage for local discovery at 45%, up from 6% a year earlier. A separate benchmark of more than 200 U.S. service businesses puts their average AI visibility score at 30 out of 100.