Weekly Update - December 21, 2019: YouTube, Blogger, Location Tracking

Happy Holidays! If you celebrate Christmas, I hope Santa Claus pays you a visit, whether you track him with NORAD and Bing Maps or use Google’s Santa Tracker. This is my last weekly update for 2019, although I’ll be posting and end-of-year review before the end of the year. If you just follow the Weekly Update I’ll see you in 2020!

This week there are YouTube Studio updates, Blogger mobile-friendly updates, site fact checking, an exposé of the privacy-invading location tracking and more.

Blogger updated the new mobile-friendly account interface, available in Blogger in Draft. Now you can try the new version of Posts, Pages, Layout, Themes, Reading List, Comments and Stats. You can always switch back to “Classic” Blogger. Just be sure to submit feedback to the Blogger team to let them know what you liked and disliked, and what features you’d like to see.
YouTube Studio has new tools to make it easier to deal with copyright claims. Now your dashboard will show copyright strike information, and YouTube will provide more details about the claimed content. There is also a new filter on the Videos page that lets you find your videos impacted by copyright strikes or Content ID claims. And if only part of your video has claimed copyrighted content, the Assisted Trim tool will let you snip out the claimed content with a few clicks, which automatically releases the claim.
If you are wondering why Analytics in YouTube Studio is so different than the classic YouTube Analytics, watch this Creator Insider video to learn more about how YouTube is thinking about it. It may not make you feel better about missing features or the changed navigation, but it will give you a better sense of why it’s going in that direction - and, of course, do send feedback to YouTube from inside Studio to let them know about what features you are missing.
The Creator Insider channel lets the YouTube tech team communicate with the creator community directly. Now Creator Insider’s Tom and other product team members are also posting YouTube Studio updates in this thread in the YouTube Community. You can Subscribe to the thread for email updates. Recent updates include: “Quick buttons” to post a video or go live from the Studio Dashboard and the ability to manually insert mid-roll ads as part of the upload process.
Channel Permissions is a new feature slowly rolling out in YouTube Studio that lets you give others access to your channel data and tools. There are four levels of permissions: Manager, Editor, Viewer & Viewer limited. If your channel is one of the small percentage with access to this feature, you will see it YouTube Studio > Settings > Permissions.
If you are concerned about the new, required, yes or no “made for kids” designation of your videos, YouTube Creators has posted a new video answering top creator questions about COPPA. If you are unsure about your channel’s content, it may clear up some of your confusion.
Flickr “the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business”, posted a plea for money. SmugMug has made some significant improvements since taking over Flickr, but they say it’s not sustainable to keep operating at a loss.They are asking for people who use the service to upgrade to a Pro account (currently with a 25% discount).
Google Duo has a new holiday AR filter that turns you into a talking Christmas tree. I’m not sure what to make of it.
Google has provided more details about how they fact check links in Google Search and News. Fact checking organizations mark up their content using the ClaimReview schema, that lets Google - and anyone - see that a web page includes a fact check. You can search the library of 40,000 fact checks that Google uses for Search and News in the US, UK, Brazil, France and India. In 2020 Google will be working to improve their fact checking process.
Instagram is expanding their fact-checking program worldwide. Content rated false or partially false is removed from Explore and hashtag pages. It will also be labeled as false information with a “See Why” option. If it’s rated false on Instagram that will carry over to Facebook, and vice versa.
Instagram AI will now detect potentially bullying captions before they are posted and pop up a warning.
Google, Amazon, Apple, and the Zigbee Alliance members (including Samsung SmartThings, Signify, Ikea, and other smart home product makers) are working together to develop a new open smart home connectivity standard called Connected Home over IP.
The New York Times published an eye-opening investigation on smartphone tracking. Apps track your location and provide that information to 3rd party companies. That data is “anonymized”, but in reality we all move uniquely in the world, from home to work to shops to entertainment. The data is detailed enough for the Times reporters to use their leaked dataset to identify specific individuals by their movements, even apparently a member of President Trump’s Secret Service detail and government officials. They do offer tips for minimizing how much of your data is shared, but it’s ultimately very difficult to prevent it, other than not using a mobile phone at all.
Looking forward to 2020, use a free social media marketing calendar to help plan your content around events and holidays.
If you want to easily watch the videos mentioned this week, take a look at my playlist of the videos I suggest in my weekly roundup link list and follow it in your YouTube account.

Read on for more news, updates and tips for video creators, webmasters, chromebook 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: Berry Christmas on Pixabay (free for commercial use)

Peggy K's Creator News

Search This Blog

Weekly Update - December 21, 2019: YouTube, Blogger, Location Tracking

Upcoming

YouTube and Video Creation

Social Media: Facebook and Instagram

Social Media: Twitter

Other Social Media

Google Photos and Photo Sharing

Google for Businesses

Bloggers and Webmasters

AdSense and Advertising

Hangouts, Meetings and Messaging

Made by Google, Android, Google Fi

Productivity

Chrome and Chrome OS

Privacy and Security

More around the web

Labels

Comments

Post a Comment