Peggy K's Creator News

We Americans celebrate our Independence Day on July 4th, and many folks have already started their holiday. Perhaps that’s why YouTube made several big announcements this week. There were also updates for FeedBurner, public transit info in Google Maps and more. And if you are in the US have a safe holiday! This week YouTube announced major improvements in recommendations on the YouTube homepage and “up next”: You can now explore specific topics and related videos, completely remove recommendations from channels you don’t watch (and don’t want to watch), and see more information about why a video was recommended to you. Note that the option to choose topics based on what you watch is currently available in English on Android, but it will be “coming soon” to more languages and devices. For more information about how recommendations work, go behind the scenes with Team YouTube . YouTube also announced they will be gradually rolling out a new default in comment settings : all “pote...

FeedBurner announced today that they have deprecated the MyBrand Service, that allows bloggers to point their own domain to their FeedBurner feed. You will no longer be able to add a domain as of July 31, 2019, but existing MyBrand domains will continue to work .  FeedBurner is Google's service for customizing and promoting your blog or website feed. If you add a "subscribe by email" gadget to your Blogger blog, it's Feedburner that sends out an email with new posts. (And you can create a "subscribe to my blog by email" link you can share anywhere.) Here's what MyBrand lets you do : MyBrand lets you create an alias at your domain so that you can "mask" your feed URL at FeedBurner. For purposes of this example, we're going to assume that your domain is "yourdomain.com" (yes, we're clever), and you have a feed that today is at feeds.feedburner.com/BestFeedEver. Once MyBrand is active, you can use feeds.yourdomain....

If you want to help shape the direction of YouTube, you can opt in and provide feedback about experimental desktop features at YouTube New . If no experiment is available, you may be able to sign up to participate in a research study. The experiments are usually available for 2 weeks and "help determine the feature's future". To try new features: 1. Sign in to your YouTube channel on desktop 2. Go to youtube.com/new 3. For any experiment you want to try out, click the Join  button 4. Try out the feature and send feedback, which you can do by clicking the Send Feedback button on the YouTube New page. Currently you can try out a Persistent Miniplayer, available through July 8th. It's not clear if this is in addition to or a replacement for  YouTube TestTube ( www.youtube.com/testtube ) . Learn more in the YouTube Help Center: Test feature experiments at Youtube.com/new

It’s summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime ! The sun is shining, temperatures are rising and there are sexy new options for advertisers. Plus updates for YouTubers, business owners, webmasters and anyone interested in Google’s messaging options. Hangouts on Air will be going away in 2019. That’s not new news, but YouTube has brought that to more folks’ attention by adding a notice when you click the Start Broadcasting button. YouTube suggests you use their simple webcam live streaming , but that lacks screen sharing and the option to have others join you in the broadcast. I’ve shared some suggestions for alternatives here . YouTube held YouTube Analytics Day, to introduce everyone to the new YouTube Analytics in Studio. Hopefully you gave it a try and submitted feedback about what classic features you are missing in YouTube Studio. Classic YouTube Analytics will be going away, so it’s important to let YouTube know what features you need. Google has introduced “AR Beauty ...

If you ran a Hangout on Air live stream this week, you may have spotted a new notice when you clicked the "Start Broadcast" button that states "Hangouts on Air is going away later this year," and suggests trying YouTube's webcam live streaming option. Update August 1: While you can still see scheduled Hangouts on Air in YouTube Live Events, the Start Hangout On Air button is greyed out, and if you move your cursor over it you will see Hangouts On Air has been discontinued. Update July 15: The notice now says "Going away on August 1st". Make sure you don't have any HOA live streams scheduled after that date. "Hangouts On Air is going away later this year.   For quick streaming, try  YouTube.com/webcam ." Observant folks probably already knew this change was coming. The YouTube Live Event setup page has recommended trying the simple "Camera" webcam streaming for months, and t he YouTube Help Center article about Hangou...

This week there were updates for gamers, video creators, webmasters and much more. Dig in! In honor of World Blood Donor Da y, Facebook and Google are making it easier to become a blood donor in the US. Google partners with the Red Cross to help donors find a blood drive using Google Maps. And starting today, you can sign up to be a blood donor on Facebook . And if you are able, consider donating. In a change meant to reduce user confusion, Google announced that Photos will no longer synchronize with Google Drive as of July 10th. What this means is that any images or videos uploaded to Google Photos after that date will not automatically appear in Google Drive, and vice versa. There will be an option to import selected images from Drive into your Google Photos. Many users probably won’t notice the change, but for those of us who do use it to manage image uploads via Drive (and organize into albums in Photos), access Photos images from third party services (which is done via Dri...

Google announced today that  Google Photos will no longer be integrated with Google Drive . Youtube is also updating its desktop video uploader, and the new version (currently in beta) does not include the option to import videos from Google Photos. Also, the new YouTube desktop uploader no longer includes import from Google Photos. Google+ Photos were made available in Google Drive  in March 2015, shortly before the independent Google+-free  Google Photos launched . That integration has been been useful in a number of ways: Photos and videos uploaded or synced to Google Drive appear in Google Photos and so can be added to Photos albums and shared via Photos. You can use Google Drive file embedding options to embed Google Photos videos on your blog or website. You can import videos from Google Drive into your personal YouTube channel using the "Import from Google Photos" option . Photos and videos backed up or uploaded to Google Photos can be accessed by third p...

This week you can explore the ocean or become a Stadia Founder; Apple announced software updates, new features and hardware; and there was much furor around changes in - and enforcement of - YouTube policy . Plus so. many. updates. Take a moment to explore the oceans. There are new underwater Street View images available in Google Earth . And to remind us that we humans aren’t alone on Earth,Pattern Radio Whale Songs is a new site that lets you visualize and explore recordings of whale songs. Maybe we will learn what they are a saying? Google Earth for Chrome now shows clouds a nd weather patterns from the past 24 hours. Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference was this week. There were a bunch of announcements , including updated iPhone photo editing software (you can now rotate video!), new features for iPads that let you use it as a second display for your Mac, the death of iTunes (replaced by Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple Podcasts), and the pricey redesigned Mac Pro . If ...

YouTube seems to be playing continual catch-up to reduce the spread and influence of hateful content and bad actors on the platform. This week YouTube made two announcements: they posted an overview of their policies designed to protect kids , and updated their hate speech policy . In brief, today's update expanded YouTube's hate speech policy now includes: Claims that one group is superior to justify discrimination. Claims that the covered attributes are an illness or mental deficiency. All videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology. Claims that deny well-documented violent events took place. Added caste as a protected attribute. Read on for more details about what YouTube's hate speech policies cover and how those policies are enforced.

On Monday the New York Times  published a damning article detailing how YouTube's recommendation algorithms lead viewers with a sexual interest in children from an innocent home video of kids to not only more similar content, but content that is more sexual: Any individual video might be intended as nonsexual, perhaps uploaded by parents who wanted to share home movies among family. But YouTube’s algorithm, in part by learning from users who sought out revealing or suggestive images of children, was treating the videos as a destination for people on a different sort of journey. Julia Alexander of The Verge has pointed out that YouTube has an interest in supporting the very popular "family vlogging" channels, which often feature kids. Since the 2017 "adpocalypse" YouTube has seemingly increased the recommendations of videos with kids, as they are usually "advertiser friendly ". Creators noticed that change  and started featuring kids in their v...

This week is all about … the future. There are changes coming to Analytics in YouTube Studio, Google Search indexing, AdSense ad unit settings, Chrome extensions and much more. Read on! We got a sneak peek at new features in development for Analytics in YouTube Studio. You will be able to see a selection of other videos your audience watched (not only from your channel), and there will be a new Important Notifications card on your Analytics dashboard. In mid-June there will be "YTA Day" where everyone will be directed to new YouTube Studio so that YouTube can get feedback. If you are a die-hard user of classic YouTube Analytics, check out this overview of advanced features in YouTube Studio Analytics from YouTube Creators YouTube channel Memberships will be integrated with Cameo , a platform for booking personal video shout-outs. The stand-alone YouTube Gaming mobile apps and desktop site have been shut down . You can now find gaming content on YouTube proper at www....