Peggy K's Creator News

This week there’s news for YouTube creators, AdSense publishers, and folks interested in recording local stories: YouTube announced Official Artist Channels as a single stop for fans of music artists. If an artist has multiple official channels - for example a personal channel and a channel created by their record label - the content will be combined on the Artist Channel, and subscribers to the individual channel will be subscribed to that combined channel instead.  YouTube also announced that the official Creator Community will be closing. The Community becomes read-only on January 30 and will shut down completely on February 28. They didn’t announce any direct replacement, but suggested people join the YouTube Product Forum , and follow YouTube Creators and Team YouTube on Twitter, and YouTube Creator Academy , YouTube Help , and Creator Insider on YouTube. Facebook is taking on Twitch and YouTube Gaming with the launch of a Gaming Creator pilot program . Facebook say...

Last week YouTube announced new eligibility requirements for the Partner Program . Instead of 10,000 total views, your channel must now have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours   of watchtime over the past 12 months. And not only does your channel need to meet those requirements to be accepted into the program, it needs to meet those requirements on an ongoing basis to remain in the program. This is definitely hard for a lot of channels. YouTube has explained that the reason why they made the changes was to prevent "bad actors" from harming the program overall .  And they have pointed out that  90% of affected channels earned less than $2.50 last month, and 99% earn less than $8 per month (or less in a year than the $100 required to be issued a payment). There is no reason to doubt that's true But that leaves 1% of affected channels that are actually regularly earning much more than that, and they will lose out. What kinds of channels? There are appliance r...

This week the focus is on changes for YouTube Creators, but there are also updates for webmasters, small businesses, Project Fi customers and more: The big story for creators this week was major changes to the eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program. Instead of 10,000 lifetime views, your channel must now have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watchtime. Channels that are currently in the YouTube Partner Program will be removed if they don’t meet those requirements by February 20th. But even if your channel is no longer eligible for monetization you will not lose any Creator features that your channel has right now - custom thumbnails, scheduled uploads, live streaming, external links will not be removed if your channel isn’t eligible to show ads. Still have questions? Head over to the YouTube Help Forum where there is an official FAQ being regularly updated with the answers to new questions. As a friendly reminder: Sub4sub violates YouTube policy. I...

This week’s updates include new gadgets, more YouTube struggles with controversial content, new tools for webmasters, information for Chromebook owners and more. This week was CES - the big Consumer Electronics Show - in Las Vegas. Google hasn’t had an official presence there in several years, but this year they went in big, with a huge “playground” booth and Google Assistant everywhere . They announced Google Assistant-powered “Smart Displays” , plus a new Daydream stand-alone VR headset and VR180 cameras . And there were lots more TVs, computers, and gadgets from leading manufacturers. Not to mention t he latest in self-driving pizza delivery vehicles . In the wake of last week’s Logan Paul “incident” , in which the popular YouTuber shared a video showing someone who had committed suicide, YouTube posted an open letter acknowledging for their lack of communication. They stated that “there will be consequences”, which there have been . But beyond that, YouTube promised they wi...

In this first week of 2018, there aren’t many updates, as Google and the other big tech companies recover from the holidays. Heck, I'm still recovering from the holidays. The big news was that there are bugs in modern computer processors - dubbed Meltdown & Spectre - that allow programs to steal passwords and other sensitive data. Almost every computer produced in the past 20 years is affected. Chip manufacturers, OS makers, Cloud computing sellers and web browser developers - Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, ARM, Mozilla, RedHat and others - have released security patches, or at least discussed how their hardware, software or services might be affected. This issue is still developing, and I’m sure there will be more updates in the coming weeks. There were some smaller updates as well: Google My Business Listings can add video. All existing paid YouTube channels and videos have been made private . Individual purchased videos will be available through Jan...

In this last Weekly Review for 2017, here’s a roundup of updates for Creators across the Googleverse over the past year. If you want a quick overview, watch my video . Click the links below to get all the details about 2017 updates. Year in Review 2017: YouTube Creators, Partners and Live Streamers New eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program The “Adpocalypse” New Community Guidelines and stricter policy enforcement Retirement of the Annotations editor, YouTube video editor and Slide Show creator Mobile live streaming for (almost) everyone Super Chat and Sponsorship: two new monetization methods for live streamers On the horizon: new YouTube interface, new Creator Studio, Communities, Reels, YouTube Gaming Lounge Year in Review 2017: Google+ Comes Into Its Own Retirement of Classic Google+ Topics and Discover for finding interesting content The new Profile “About” card Advanced Google+ search operators Delete, and report comments, and blo...

For Bloggers, webmasters and AdSense publishers, 2017 brought new themes, new ad formats and new ways to help your site appear in Google search. Blogger Updates AdSense Updates Webmaster Updates Blogger Updates Blogger surprised a lot of people this year by launching brand new modern and responsive themes. I used the new Notable theme to give this blog a new look . If you want to give one of them a try, it’s easy to switch . While Blogger hasn’t made any announcements about what 2018 has in store, I’m hoping more modernization is in the works. 2017 Blogger Updates March:Express your unique #bloggerstyle with new Blogger templates themes! June: Update to Blogger Modern Themes: customize sidebar and post widths   Top Blogger Tips Google Sites Updates In November 2016 Google launched a t otally rebuilt Google Sites website builder. In 2017 there have been steady improvements. You can find all the Google Sites updates on the G Suite Updates...

This year Google has been focusing on Allo , Duo and Android Messages for consumer messaging. But if you use Hangouts, don’t despair, Google has assured users that Hangouts isn’t going to disappear for consumers, even as the focus shifts to productivity and business applications This year Hangouts has been focused on updating the new Hangouts Meet video meetings , and Hangouts Chat - Google’s answer to Slack - which is not yet publicly available. There wasn’t much in the way of new features for regular Hangouts, and some older features have been retired. The Hangouts mobile app no longer supports SMS messaging except for Project Fi and Google Voice. And in April, In April non-business and live stream related video call apps were retired, along with the Google+ Hangouts API. But Hangouts on Air is still part of YouTube Live , despite the rapidly aging interface. I suspect that live streamers who don’t need the discussion panel format have moved to using their mobile phone...