Monday is Labor Day in the US, the unofficial end of summer. Pack away your swimsuit, put on a sweater, and dig in to this week’s updates and tips. There is news for YouTubers, AdSense Publishers and more.
Image: Aster tongolensis. Image by Shirley Hirst from Pixabay . Free for commercial use.
- YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki posted her quarterly update for creators, with a discussion of how YouTube tries to balance “openness” with protecting the YouTube community. She argues that having an open platform gives “diverse and authentic voices” a platform and helps build community. But that also means allowing some controversial and offensive content. So YouTube tries to follow the “4 Rs”: quickly Remove policy-violating content, Raise-up authoritative voices, Reduce the spread of content that almost (but doesn’t quite) violate policy, and Reward eligible creators with monetization opportunities.
To that end, YouTube made changes to their recommendation system in the US to reduce the spread of problematic content. That worked well enough that they are testing similar changes in the UK, Ireland, South Africa and other English-language markets. - You can try out YouTube’s “Create a Queue” experiment by opting in at www.youtube.com/new. This desktop feature lets you create and add videos to a queue to control what plays next. The experiment runs through September 10th.
- YouTube Kids is now available on the web at www.youtubekids.com. YouTube has created a new “Preschool” age group, for content appropriate for the under-5 set that “promotes creativity, playfulness, learning, and exploration.” The “Younger” age group is for ages 5-7, and lets kids explore their interests, while “Older”, for ages 8-12, adds vlogs, gaming, more music videos, science and more. This update comes on the heels of a $200 million fine paid to the FTC over child privacy violations.
- Starting next week, YouTube will stop publicly displaying “exact” subscriber counts. You can, of course, continue to view your own channel’s subscriber numbers and other subscriber-related stats in YouTube Studio.
- Creator Insider gave a sneak peek at YouTube live streaming tools that will be rolling out next week in Live Control Room: Live highlights (create highlight clips as you stream), a viewer activity widget, stream health widget, custom named stream keys (for power users), and an improved management list for your upcoming and current live streams. Stay tuned!
- Pinterest is working to stop the spread of medical misinformation on their platform. They are removing misinformation and making sure accurate information from reliable sources appears in vaccine-related searches. But they also recognize that there is a lot of misinformation out there, and science-based medical information is often not that interesting to look at. To that end, Pinterest’s creative team is helping health organizations create “visually compelling” Pins for text-based content.
- On Monday, September 1, Google Search will be retiring support for “unsupported and unpublished rules” (such as noindex, nofollow and crawl-delay) in robots.txt. Check your website's robots.txt to make sure it complies. If you are using the Blogger default robots.txt, you won't need to make any changes.
- AdSense, AdMob and Google Ad Manager announced that they will be streamlining and standardizing their publisher policies across products. The policy will cover two categories of content: Google Publisher Policies on content you are prohibited from placing ads on and violate policy, and Google Publisher Restrictions on content that that Google will not serve Google Ads on, but that you can monetize with other advertising products. There are now also Policy Change Log pages for each product, where you can easily find policy updates. YouTube Partners should keep an eye on that information, because the Partner Program Policies require adherence to AdSense Policy as well.
- Now while you are presenting with Google Slides you can easily switch to a blank screen, set auto-advance time, or loop the presentation.
- Flickr now offers users professional-quality photo printing via partnerships with Bay Photo, Loxley Colour, and White House Custom Colour.
- Adobe InDesign is 20 years old. To celebrate, Adobe is offering free retro-looking InDesign templates.
- If you are a G Suite user, and you have an Out of Office (OOO) entry in your Google Calendar, people will see the OOO message when they compose an email in Gmail or a message in Hangouts Chat. You can disable this in your Calendar settings under Access permissions.
- Skype has some nice new features: message drafts, message bookmarks, new look for sending groups of photos and videos, and the ability to preview media before sending it. If you aren’t a Skyper, but those features sound good to you, send feedback through your favorite messaging app to let the developers know.
Read on for more news, updates and tips for YouTubers, Map navigators, Chrome users, business owners and more. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.
Image: Aster tongolensis. Image by Shirley Hirst from Pixabay . Free for commercial use.
Upcoming
- September 1: Google retiring “unsupported and unpublished rules” (such as noindex, nofollow and crawl-delay) in robots.txt
- September 2: YouTube starts abbreviating publicsubscriber counts
- September 3: Google webmaster office hours
- September 6: Google webmaster office hours
- September 9: Deadline to apply for YouTube NextUp Conhecimento Criativo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
YouTube and Video Creation
- Susan Wojcicki: Preserving openness through responsibility (YouTube Creators)
- Mid-roll Experiment, YTA Revenue Performance Analysis, Updates to Child Safety Policies, and More! (Creator Insider)
- View your YouTube channel's total subscriber count after public numbers are abbreviated
- Abbreviated public-facing subscriber counts (YouTube Engineering & Developers blog)
- After US trial, YouTube will adjust UK algorithm to reduce hate videos and fake content (BoingBoing)
- Updates coming to YouTube Kids (YouTube)
- YouTube settles with FTC over child privacy violations (The Next Web)
- YouTube, Which Remains Exhaustingly Inconsistent, Reinstates Several Banned Far-Right Channels (Gizmodo)
- YouTube NextUp Tokyo creators announced (YouTube Japan)
Go Live
- Top 5 New Features in Live Control Room [Sneak Peek] (Creator Insider)
Social Media: Facebook and Instagram
- Updates to Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics in the US (Facebook Newsroom)
Social Media: Twitter
- The CEO Of Twitter's Twitter Was Hacked (BuzzFeed News)
Other Social Media
- Bringing authoritative vaccine results to Pinterest search (Pinterest)
- Pinterest’s work in public health shows the good a smaller social network can do (The Verge)
Google Photos and Photo Sharing
- Print Boldly with photo prints on Flickr (Flickr)
- Luminar invents Google+ Photos 2013 (John Nack)
Google for Businesses
- Google abruptly decides to shelve Hire recruiting tool (Android Police)
- Google now showing competitor ads on local business profiles (Search Engine Land)
Bloggers and Webmasters
- Google Search Console: How to Submit a Robots.txt in the New Version? #AskGoogleWebmasters (Google Webmasters)
- 20 Years of Google Blogger (Paolo Amoroso)
AdSense and Advertising
- Google Streamlining Publisher Policies & Adding Policy Change Log for AdSense, AdMob and Ad Manager
- Simplifying our content policies for publishers (Inside AdSense)
- Simplifying our content policies for publishers (Ad Manager)
- Data engineering lessons from Google AdSense: using streaming joins in a recommendation system (Google Cloud)
Hangouts, Meetings and Messaging
- See when someone is out of office in Gmail and Hangouts Chat (G Suite Updates)
- Google wants to kill text messages and the networks aren't happy (WIRED)
- New Skype features boost your productivity and enrich your chat experience (Skype)
- Messenger Updates Platform and Launches New Tools to Drive More Valuable Conversations Between People and Businesses (Facebook)
- Facebook Messenger reportedly working on a screen sharing feature, Duo users waiting in despair (Android Police)
Made by Google & Android
- Committed to a safer Google Play for Families (Android Developers)
- Google’s Android team talks Android 10, ‘Queen Cake,’ gestures, and more [Video] (9to5Google)
Productivity
- Travel your first and last mile with Google Maps (Google)
- Switch to a blank screen and set advanced time options for presentations in Google Slides (G Suite Updates)
- Google Drive apps and Editor add-ons moving from Chrome Web Store to G Suite Marketplace (G Suite Updates)
- How to get back 'exact size' search filter on Google Images and other missing parameters (Android Police)
- Chrome for Android Update (Chrome 76) (Chrome Releases)
- Chrome Stable Channel Update for Desktop (Chrome 76) (Chrome Releases)
- Google is decluttering Chrome by killing a bunch of features no one used (BGR)
Privacy and Security
- Don't Play in Google's Privacy Sandbox (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
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