Weekly Update - April 3, 2021: Hangouts, YouTube, Meet

Happy Easter weekend! I hope yours is sunny and safe.

No fooling! Google and most other big tech companies skipped April Fool’s Day again this year, which was probably a wise decision. There were a few cute jokes, like this amazing Canadian Space Agency discovery. Google did post some - no joking - productivity tips.

More content can be monetized on YouTube: Some content that previously would only show “limited” ads can now be fully monetized. That includes some content with moderate profanity, showing violent interaction with law enforcement, humorous adult content, educational content on drug use, or discussion of controversial issues.

Free accounts can continue hosting long Meet video calls: If you have a free personal Google account you can continue hosting Meet video calls up to 24 hours long until July. Originally free accounts were to be limited to 60 minute calls starting March 31.

Another step away from classic Hangouts: This week Hangouts stopped supporting phone calls and Google Fi and Voice text messages. This change was announced last October.

• Users in the United States can add a Google Voice phone number and use the Google Voice site and app for calls and texts.
• If you are outside the US or don’t want to use Voice, you can get a refund of any unused calling credits, and export your classic Hangouts data until July 2021.
• Google Fi customers have until September 30 to transfer their SMS/MMS data from Hangouts to Messages.
• You can continue to use Hangouts for regular Hangouts conversations until the migration to Google Chat is complete.

Get organized: Stack is a new experimental app from Google’s Area 120 that helps you organize digital copies of your documents. You can use the app to scan your documents, and Stack will automatically suggest a category. It can also automatically detect important information like the “due date” on a bill. And you can synchronize your document scans with Google Drive, so they will continue to be accessible if you stop using Stack (or Area 120 cancels the experiment).

More updates ...

YouTube and Video

• YouTube is asking Creators in the United States to fill out a survey regarding their gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity. It’s totally optional, but will help YouTube better understand the Creator base and how their algorithms affect various communities. The information you provide will not be shared with advertisers or used elsewhere on Google.
• YouTube is testing hiding the public dislike count. Creators can still see those numbers for their channel in YouTube Studio. Why the change? It’s at least in part aimed at improving the mental well-being of creators, especially those who have a dislike campaign aimed at their channel.
• YouTube is also experimenting with descriptions on mobile. Watch this Creator Insider clip to learn more.
• This was Periscope’s last week. Periscope was one of a number of live streaming apps (including Meerkat and Blab) that launched in 2015. It was acquired by Twitter, which later built live streaming into its platform while maintaining Periscope as a stand-alone app. You can still view public Periscope broadcast links at periscope.tv.

AdSense and Advertising

• If you are considering monetizing your own website with AdSense, or you applied and your site was disapproved, check out this new series of videos on AdSense about Site Approvals.
• Google has relaunched its Google Certified Publishing Partner directory, if you are looking for professional assistance in optimising your Google Ad Manager, AdMob, or AdSense ads, that is the place to start.
• The cookiepocalypse is coming! In the next year Chrome will join other major web browsers and block third party cookies. Third party cookies are used for ad tracking, among other things. It makes sense to block those cookies to protect user privacy, but Google is also a major advertising platform. And so it has proposed a privacy-sensitive alternative: Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC. The Verge has an explainer.

Blogging

• WordPress.com’s dashboard has a new streamlined design.
• Medium now lets you connect your Twitter account, so you can find people who you follow on Twitter on Medium (at least that have also connected their Twitter account).

Social Media

• If you enjoy creating Stories on Social Media, then you’ll be happy to hear that you can now add a (very limited) selection of stickers to your Twitter Fleets.
• At The Verge, Ashley Carman explains how Clubhouse’s success with “social audio” means they have to defend themselves from Facebook, Twitter, Discord, Spotify, LinkedIn and other platforms that are jumping in with similar features. And at Future Tense Lawrence Weru considers how the shift to audio can leave folks with speech issues (like stutterers) behind.
• Facebook now lets you control who can comment on your public posts. Plus the Feed Filter Bar lets you more easily switch to a chronological news feed and access your Favorites (your prioritized people and Pages).
• Instagram Reels just got more TikTok-like. You can use the Remix feature to create your own Reel next to one that already exists.
• Discord explains how to start your own Discord Server and lists best practices for starting a great community.

More

• Get some tips for spotting misinformation online.
• Google Maps is can now navigate indoors with augmented reality (AR) Live View. This will first be available in shopping malls in the US, and airport and train stations internationally.
• Google Maps is also adding a new weather and air quality layer, which will help you decide what to wear or whether to stay inside instead.
• At The Conversation, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge explain how they taught Google Translate to stop being sexist.

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.

Photo: Easter candy by Tim Gouw on Pexels. (Free to use, no attribution required)