Weekly Update - January 25, 2020: YouTube, Collections, Datasets

恭喜发财! 새해 복 많이 받으세요! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới! Happy New Year! This week there are new permissions in YouTube Studio, new Search Collection tools to collaboratively save links, search tools to find datasets on the web and updates for video creators, webmasters, and more

• To celebrate the Lunar New Year Google is showing a special Year of the Rat doodle in Vietnam, South Korea, China, the US, and a number of other countries. Click the link to learn more and see cute illustrations of rats and other zodiac animals.
• You can now add Managers, Editors or Viewers to your YouTube Studio if your YouTube channel is on your Google account, and not a Brand Account. Watch for my tutorial next week!
• Get a sneak peek at YouTube’s new caption editor on Creator Insider.
• You can now use a green screen when live streaming in Stream Yard. Stream Yard has grown in leaps and bounds, starting with 100 broadcasters on January 1, 2019 and growing to 16,000 broadcasters at the beginning of 2020.
• Byte is a short form video platform from Vine co-creator Dom Hofmann. It’s been in development for several years, and launched public Android and iOS apps on Friday. This successor to Vine (which was purchased and later shut down by Twitter) lets you create or upload 6 second looping videos, but has relatively limited features compared to TikTok. The big difference: Byte is already developing a partner program that will revenue share with creators.
• Vimeo Create is a new tool for businesses, entrepreneurs and marketers to make professional-looking short-form videos. It’s currently in Beta and requires a Vimeo Pro account. Check it out.
• Google has added new features to Collections in Search. Collections let you save and organize pages from the search results and also lets you access your Google Maps lists. Now on the mobile web or Android Google app (which has a new Collections bottom tab), there are AI-suggested Collections and a “Find More” button within your existing Collections. Plus you can now not only share your Collection, but also collaborate with others to build a Collection. It’s a bit like amped-up bookmarks, a bit Pinterest-like, but it’s really its own thing. The downside is that it’s really designed for use on mobile, with few options on desktop. Try creating a Collection.
• Google’s Dataset Search is now out of beta. There are millions of available datasets, from marketing studies, to heath statistics,to scientific research, to government records and much more. Check out the data you can find on skiing, or oxytocin, or pizza.
• Google also announced updates to Data Studio Community Visualizations. Data Studio is a free tool that lets you analyze data and create reports. Try it (perhaps with a dataset found in Dataset Search).
• If you are a heavy user of Google Drive, Gmail or Calendar, you may want to add 3rd party applications as add-ons for quick access. For example you can add writing tools or image editing apps in Drive, your favorite conferencing service to Calendar, or a canned response manager to Gmail. This new feature is available for both consumer accounts and G Suite accounts.
• Google started rolling out a new design for desktop search, with prominent favicon images. This is how the mobile Google Search results have looked for some time now. It turns out some folks really hate the new “logo-filled” look, and in response Google will be testing different placement of the favicons.
• Finally, it’s time to plan for Google I/O. Google launched a collaborative game that should reveal the date. See the reveal and play the game.

Read on for more tips and updates for video creators, webmasters and more.
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Image: Photo of red paper lanterns by mentatdgt on Pexels. Free to use. (I thought about using a picture of rats, but that wasn't quite as aesthetically pleasing).

Upcoming

• Early 2020: AdSense discontinuing mobile apps
• February 2020: Changes in ads to protect privacy

YouTube and Video Creation

• Sneak Peek: A NEW Caption Editor! (YouTube Creator Insider)
• YouTube moderators are being forced to sign a statement acknowledging the job can give them PTSD (The Verge)
• YouTube TV launches on PlayStation 4 as Vue shutdown nears (The Verge)
• Make high-impact social videos in minutes: Vimeo Create beta is now open (Vimeo)

Go Live

• Green Screens and Stream Yard’s Year in Review (Stream Yard)
• YouTube Gaming To Exclusively Livestream Overwatch, Call Of Duty Leagues As Part Of Multiyear Activision Blizzard/Google Partnership (TubeFilter)

Social Media: Facebook and Instagram

• Instagram removes the IGTV button you weren't using (Engadget)
• Instagram drops IGTV button, but only 1% downloaded the app (TechCrunch)

Other Social Media

• Vine reboot Byte officially launches (TechCrunch)
• Byte, A New Version Of Vine, Is Now Available On iOS And Android (BuzzFeed News)
• TikTok Signs New Music Licensing Deals to Enable Increased Music Usage and Partnerships (Social Media Today)
• Spotify’s new test lets influencers post Stories to introduce their own playlists (TechCrunch)

Google Photos and Photo Sharing

• Announcing the winners of our 2019 Your Best Shot Contest (Flickr)

Search Tools

• A fresh way to revisit your online finds in Google Search (Google)
• Do more with Data Studio Community Visualizations (Google)
• Discovering millions of datasets on the web (Google)

Bloggers and Webmasters

• Sunsetting support for data-vocabulary (Google Webmasters)
• Google’s mobile-first indexing guide update emphasizes the same content across site versions (Search Engine Land)
• Listings that earn featured snippets will not repeat on the first page of Google search (Search Engine Land)
• URL Inspection Tool - Google Search Console Training (Google Webmasters on YouTube)
• English Google Webmaster Central office-hours from January 24, 2020 (Google Webmasters on YouTube)
• The Block Editor is Now Supported on the WordPress Native Apps (WordPress)

AdSense and Advertising

• Iterate your way to success with A/B testing (AdMob)

Hangouts, Meetings and Messaging

• View data for only selected call participants in the Meet Quality Tool (G Suite Updates)

Made by Google, Android, Google Fi

• Google designed an envelope you can use to hide your phone from yourself (The Verge)

Chrome and Chromebooks

• Google announces 8 years of Chrome OS software updates for all new Chromebooks (Updated) (About Chromebooks)
• What's new on the Chromebook App Hub (Google)
• Unleash student creativity with Chromebooks (Google)
• Improving 40 million Chromebooks for education (Google)
• Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS (Chrome Releases)
• Chrome for Android Update (Chrome Releases)

Productivity

• G Suite Add-ons now generally available in Calendar, Gmail, and Google Drive (G Suite Updates)

Privacy and Security

• Curious case of privacy bug in iOS Intelligent Tracking Prevention (Lukasz Olejnik)

More around the web

• UK will not implement EU Article 13 copyright law (BBC News)
• Releasing the Drosophila Hemibrain Connectome — The Largest Synapse-Resolution Map of Brain Connectivity (Google AI Blog)
• Sundar Pichai offers a cryptic warning against over-regulating AI (The Next Web)
• Google favors temporary facial recognition ban as Microsoft pushes back (The Verge)
• Sonos CEO apologizes for confusion, says legacy products will work for "as long as possible" (The Verge)
• Pediatrician gets death threats after pro-vaccine TikTok video (Daily Dot)