Weekly Update - January 23, 2021: US Inauguration, Google Meet Troubleshooting, YouTube Hashtags

 
January is usually a quiet month, with stay-inside weather and few updates. It’s a great time to slowly get back into the swing of things after the holidays. Only the past few weeks turned out to be more news-filled than anticipated. 

The attack of the violent mob on the US Capitol on January 6th, was a hell of a way to start of the year. On the tech side of things, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and other social media platforms struggled to deal with content denying US election results and promoting violence. The result was platforms updating their policies on the fly, and the termination or suspension of President Trump’s personal social media accounts and removal of misleading content. For example, YouTube removed “thousands of videos” spreading election misinformation.

It was also interesting to watch as Twitter transferred the @POTUS, @VP, and other official US government accounts to the new administration. That happened across social media, with YouTube transferring www.youtube.com/whitehouse, Facebook transferring the official White House and POTUS Pages, and Instagram transferring @POTUS and @Whitehouse handles.

It feels like things are back to “normal” now, at least for the 2020 level of normal. Fingers crossed the times don't get any more interesting.

This is my first weekly update for 2021, so it’s closer to a “monthly” update. Product updates are just starting to roll out, so it’s not too much to cover.

Take look back at 2020:

• Looking back at 2020: Communication, COVID-19, Creator Updates
• 2020 Review: Communicate with Meet, Duo, Chat and Messages
• 2020 Review: AdSense, YouTube Partner Program, and Monetization

YouTube and Video Creators

• YouTube has new Hashtag landing pages where you can see all the videos using a particular hashtag.
• If your YouTube channel has access to Shorts and you have been making the short vertical videos, Creator Insider explains how that will affect your metrics in YouTube Analytics.
• If your YouTube channel is in the Partner Program, check out the latest from Creator Insider. They look at how to self-rate your content with regards to profanity #$@! They also note that the Advertiser Friendly Guidelines now have more examples to help with self-certification, and they want your feedback on what’s still unclear or confusing. If you have a gaming channel, check out the Gaming-oriented version of the guidelines.
• YouTube has turned on post-roll ads by default for monetized videos longer than 10 minutes. You can turn them off during the upload process or in a video’s monetization settings.
• YouTube has a new “first 24 hours” metric in Analytics, which helps you see your video’s performance after it’s publication.
• Live streaming platform StreamYard was acquired by event platform Hopin. At least for now, StreamYard will continue to operate as a separate service.
• TikTok now has a Creator portal, where you can learn to use the platform, best practices, and trends and tips for more advanced creators.

Bloggers and Webmasters

• If you are using an older theme for your Blogger blog, you may have noticed that the quick edit tools are no longer available when you view your blog. Blogger Product Expert Adam has a helpful post explaining on how to use a third party browser extension to make these tools visible again. Note that if your blog uses a newer theme (Contempo, Soho, Emporio, Notable) the quick access tools are not included, so this does not affect your blog.
• If you are a publisher with content in Google News, Google Search Console has a new “Google News Performance Report” to help you understand user behavior.

Creator Tools

• Google has a new streamlined interface for submitting legal requests to remove content from Google (like copyright takedown notices), including Google Images, Blogger, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Ads, Search and Google Play. Just go to http://g.co/legal to start the process. Watch this video from Google Search Central for tips on filling out takedown requests.
• Patreon angered many of its users when their “look forward to 2021” post mentioned they would be changing the way the billing cycle worked. This change - which took people by surprise - could negatively impact the way creators offer their patrons rewards. Patreon posted an apology today, acknowledging the poor communication and asking creators for input.

Social Media

• Facebook introduced newly redesigned Pages, with a simplified layout and dedicated news feed.
• Facebook has also made it easier to “access your information” and see what data you have on the platform.
• Twitter acquired the team behind the social podcast app Breaker to work on Twitter Spaces, Twitter’s audio chat rooms.
• LinkedIn has new controls that let you manage who can see, and who can comment, on your posts. They also provide tips for making sure the content you see in your feed is what interests you.
• Pinterest has launched AR Try On for eyeshadow, that lets you test eyeshadows. This is in addition to AR Try On for lipstick that was launched last year.

Communications

• Google Meet has new in-meeting connection troubleshooting tools, including real-time graphs showing CPU load and network stability. If you are having system performance issues in your next meeting, use these to troubleshoot.
• Meet has also updated the landing page (meet.google.com) for Google Workspace users. It now is similar to what consumer users see, with three options for a new meeting: create a meeting for later, start an instant meeting, or schedule in Google Calendar. Creating an instant meeting now opens the meeting immediately, rather than opening the “green room” join page.
• Gmail is the new central hub for work, with your chat, video calls, and more. To that end they are making improvements to the layout of integrated products. This week’s updates lets you resize the “Chat” and “Rooms” sections on the left menu on the web. (Chat and Rooms are currently only available to Google Workspace users.)

Productivity

• Google Calendar is getting offline support on desktop. This lets you see your calendar events going back four weeks, and events in the future, even without an internet connection.

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: Snow covered ground; Photo by Pixabay from Pexels (Free to use, CC0)