Weekly Update - February 1, 2020: Video Creators, Privacy Tools, Big Game Fun

Google and Facebook highlighted their privacy tools for Data Privacy Day. When is the best time to review your account’s privacy settings? Today! Plus there are new tools and features for video creators, live streamers, webmasters, and more.

Sunday is the Super Bowl, America’s unofficial party holiday. Some people even watch the game! In these troubled times, it’s something the US tech companies can safely have some fun with. Facebook Messenger has new camera filters and stickers, Snapchat has NFL Lenses, and Twitter is attaching a “hashflag” to tweets #SBLIV. You can watch all the creative “big game” ads on YouTube, and Google has tips for using Search and Assistant for game day goodies and keeping updated.

AdSense is promoting Google’s Women of Publishing Leadership series. It’s “designed to foster community in the publishing industry, provide access to monetization resources, and enable the future growth of women-led small businesses.” There are four livestream sessions in March: Audience Engagement Strategies; Monetization, Web; Monetization, Apps; Protecting our Digital Ecosystem. At the end there is going to be an in-person meetup, but there aren’t any details as yet. You have until February 21 to apply. See the FAQ for more information.
YouTube is asking live streamers what metrics you’d like to see for Live on snapshot cardon your YouTube Studio Dashboard.
YouTube’s new option for non-Brand Account channels lets you add managers, editors and viewers to YouTube Studio. Check out my video tutorial to see how easy it is to set up. The permissions levels let you decide whether you want to give someone control over your channel’s content or just see your video list and analytics.
YouTube is testing some new Community post features, including the ability to reply to comments and sort comments by newest first. They are also testing the ability to share other creators Community posts in your own Community stream. Community posts are available to channels with at least 1,000 subscribers. The test features are only available to a very small percentage of channels, so if you see it on yours, test it out!
YouTube is adding “Stories” to the Analytics Subscription Source report. If your channel is eligible for YouTube Stories (at least 10,000 subscribers), you can find those stats Analytics which you click “See More” and select Subscription Source in the drop down menu.
YouTube is also testing a new video sticker in Stories, that links directly to the video, instead of adding it to the viewer’s watch later playlist.
If you create gaming content, be sure to watch this overview of what’s in the year ahead for YouTube Gaming and check out the “gaming channel must knows” from the official YouTube Creator channel. Facebook has also released a special set of tools for gaming creators to moderate their communities.
Tangi is a new experimental video social sharing app from Google’s Area 120. It’s a bit TikTok like, in that the videos are all a minute or less. But the focus is “DIY” tutorials, not silly memes. The social aspect isn’t just follows and comments, but also a “Try It” feature that lets people share what happened when they tried a tutorial. Tangi is currently in closed beta, so you can watch videos, and follow people, but you need to apply to be added to the beta to upload your own videos.
Speaking of short videos, Vine-successor Byte announced the details of their Partner Program, less than two weeks after the service launched. It’s a revenue sharing program, but there won’t be any pre-roll ads, feed ads or ad retargeting. Instead there will be brand campaigns that “celebrate creativity and community.” Initially the Partner Program will be invite only, but you can submit your name for consideration. It will be interesting to see if this kick-starts adoption of the platform, which by some reports is already suffering from spam, bots, and fake profiles.
Kickstarter’s The Creative Independent and Kickstarter Creator-in-Residence René Kladzyk have worked together to survey musicians and music industry professionals about the music industry. While it’s not a statistically significant sample, and Kickstarter is definitely not a disinterested party, it’s still an interesting (but not overly surprising) read.
Webmaster update: Google Search Console has launched a new version of the Removals report, that lets you temporarily hide a page from appearing in the Google Search results. The report has sections with Temporary Removals, Outdated Content Requests, and pages affected by SafeSearch Filtering.
To celebrate Data Privacy Day, Google listed some of the measures it takes to protect privacy: keeping passwords safe with Password Manager and Password Checkup; auto-delete for Location History, Web & App Activity and YouTube History; Incognito mode in Chrome, YouTube and Maps; hands-free privacy controls with the Google Assistant; Safe Browsing in Chrome; Privacy Checkup and Security Checkup tools; and ad controls with Mute this ad and Ad Settings.
Facebook is now offering more privacy tools, including an updated privacy checkup tool, the ability to see - and clear - the “off-Facebook” activity they collected (www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/), and alerts for third-party logins.
The Unicode Consortium announced 62 new emoji for 2020, plus gender and skin tone variants. Emojipedia has them all, including ninjas, smiling face with a tear, dodo, burrito, bubble tea, ladder, roller skate and more.
If you write articles or make videos about Googly things, like I do, Google’s stock photos are a useful resource. Paolo Amoroso explains where to find them.
Facebook and Twitter are taking steps to limit misinformation and the spread of harmful content about the 2019 Novel Coronavirus health emergency. Google also has a SOS Alert search page with links to reliable health and news sources.
Finally: now in the Google Earth mobile app you can zoom all the way out and see the stars.

Read on for more tips and updates for video creators, webmasters, business owners and more.
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Image: Stadium seats by wgbieber on Pixabay. Free for commercial use.

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