- Beginning of the end? Buffer ended Google+ support on January 25th and Hootsuite will end Google+ support on January 28th. Other social media management platforms that offer integration with Google+ will also be affected as there may be “intermittent failures” of the Google+ API starting the 28th. While this won’t affect posting to Google+ directly, businesses, organizations, and Pages that use third party tools to access Google+ may stop posting altogether.
- New Google+ migration alternative: LifeCloud has a Google+ Data Importer for re-creating Google+ Communities. Todd Hawk is answering questions in the “G+” Community Owners and Moderators community about how it works.
- YouTube announced they will be reducing recommendations for content that could "misinform in harmful ways", like "promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11."
- YouTube has a new informative FAQ answering questions about copyright claims and companies that may be abusing the Content ID system.
- G Suite users will be moved from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat and Meet in October. All G Suite domains will have Hangouts Chat enabled in April, and Google promises a number of new features will be rolled out before Classic Hangouts is retired *for G Suite users only*. This update will not affect consumer users, who will be able to continue using Classic Hangouts. Eventually consumer users will be transitioned to Chat and Meet too, but there is no timeline for that yet.
- Google Voice is rolling out voice-over-IP calling to all users. This lets Voice users make calls using the Google Voice app on mobile devices or at voice.google.com as an alternative to placing calls through Google Hangouts.
- G Suite Realtime Comms product lead Scott Johnston announced on Twitter that Google Voice for G Suite will be available outside the US, starting with Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. There are sadly no plans to offer * Google Voice to consumer users internationally. If you are interested, apply for the Early access Program.
- Google Search Console is a free tool that lets webmasters assess site performance in Google Search. Features are gradually being moved from the old version of Search Console to the new version. At the end of March there will be a significant update. What’s going: Crawl Errors report, fetch as Google tool, HTML suggestions, Property Sets, Android apps data. What’s new: Structured data dashboard with reports organized by “vertical” (like Jobs, Recipes, and Events).
- Gmail has new features: an Undo/Redo button, easy strikethrough formatting, and the ability to download messages as .EML files (which can be imported into other email clients).
- If you are interested in Blogger, check out my appearance on Michael Daniel’s Tinkering with Tech show. I go through some of the basic settings and answer questions.
Image: Monday, January 28th is Data Protection Day in Europe and Data Privacy Day in the rest of the world. I thought that deserved a cheesy all-your-data-is-secure graphic. To celebrate run a Security Checkup on your Google Account. Image by JanBaby on Pixabay.
Upcoming
- January 25: Buffer removed option to share to Google+
- January 28: HootSuite support for Google+ ends
- January 28: There will start to be “intermittent failures” of the Google+ API. The Google+ API will be fully shut down March 7. The Google+ API lets external sites and apps connect to Google+.
- January 31: YouTube Video Credits removed
- January 31: YouTube removes option to automatically share to Google+ and Twitter
- February 1: Deadline for news organizations to apply for Newspack by Wordpress.com
- February 5: Free Flickr accounts will have content deleted to meet the new 1000 photos or videos
- February 7: Google Partners Academy on Air: Reach the right customers with Smart Bidding
- February 12: Old Google Contacts shut down
YouTube and Video Creation
- YouTube improving recommendations (YouTube)
- YouTube TV goes nationwide, in time for the Super Bowl (YouTube)
- Answers to your questions about copyright claims on YouTube (YouTube)
- Yellow $ trouble? Ask YouTube policy specialists about the advertiser-friendly guidelines in January 25th AMA (YouTube)
- YouTube is working to prevent impersonation after top creators hit by major scam (The Verge)
- After Porting Its Creator Network To Fullscreen, Machinima Wipes Seminal YouTube Channel (Tubefilter)
- YouTube Music Unveils its First-Ever 'Artists to Watch' in Australia and New Zealand (Google Australia)
Go Live
- Google Ad Manager Integration for Live and On-Demand Video (IBM Video Streaming)
Google+
- LifeCloud has a Google+ Data Importer for re-creating Google+ Communities. (Todd Hawk in the “G+” Community Owners and Moderators community)
Other social media
- The difficulty of moderating online content with “deep learning” - even for “less challenging” content like nudity (The Next Web)
- Facebook Making Pages More Transparent and Accountable (Facebook)
- Facebook cracks down on fake news publishers with harsher punishments for bad pages (The Verge)
- Facebook introduces ‘Community Actions’ tool to petition the government (Daily Dot)
- Russia tries to force Facebook and Twitter to relocate servers to Russia (Ars Technica)
- Instagram get hacked? Good luck getting it back (Mashable)
- Instagram meme accounts are pretty now (Taylor Lorenz, The Atlantic)
- Introducing more inclusive beauty search results on Pinterest (Pinterest)
Google Photos and Online Photography
- Facebook’s photo-harvesting Moments app is shutting down next month (The Verge)
- Winners of Flickr “Your Best Shot 2018” (Flickr)
Google for businesses
- New features for service area businesses on Google My Business (Google)
- Google My Business Deprecating SMS – Caught in the Google Messaging Cluster F%#k? (Mike Blumenthal)
- Helping companies improve their customer support with Chatbase (Google)
Bloggers and Webmasters
- Focusing on the new Search Console, moving features and deprecating others (Google Webmasters)
- Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout (January 22) (Google Webmasters)
AdSense and advertising
- Google hit with £44m GDPR fine over ads (BBC News)
- Bringing more transparency to the Indian Lok Sabha Election 2019 (Google India)
- Google Partners Academy on Air: Simplify and grown your business with machine learning (Google Partners)
Hangouts and Messaging
- Upcoming Hangouts service consolidation for all G Suite customers (G Suite Updates)
- Two new Hangouts Meet tools added to the Admin console: quality tool and activity logs (G Suite Updates)
- Google Voice for G Suite will be available internationally (Scott Johnston)
- Google Voice VoIP calling is rolling out now to everyone (9to5Google)
- OneDrive is now integrated with Skype for easier file sharing and collaboration (Skype)
- WhatsApp is fighting fake news by limiting its virality. Could Facebook and Twitter do the same? (Recode)
- Facebook plans to let Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp users message each other (The Verge)
Made by Google, Android, Google Fi
Productivity
- New Gmail compose formatting and download options (G Suite Updates)
- Find more balance in your life this year, with help from Google (Google)
Privacy and Security
- GoDaddy weakness let bomb threat scammers hijack thousands of big-name domains (Ars Technica)
- Google’s proposed changes to Chrome could weaken ad blockers (Wired)
More around the web
- How do you govern the development of artificial intelligence? Policymakers are trying to figure that out (New York Times)
- Yes, “algorithms” can be biased. Here’s why (Ars Technica)
- Verizon Lays Off 800 Employees Within ‘Media Group’, Comprising Yahoo, Tumblr, More (Tubefilter)
- BuzzFeed has started its layoffs, but it’s also talking about a merger (Recode)
- Google asks Supreme Court to rule on when code can be copyrighted (The Verge)
- Oracle v. Google and the future of software development (Google)
- Expanding knowledge access with the Wikimedia Foundation (Google)
I just finished watching your interview re blogger. The sound wasn't the best but I found it most interesting and picked up a cool tip on how find other bloggers by interests via your blogger profile. I was struggling to find blogs to read this has opened the door, thank you.
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