Weekly Update - May 15, 2021: YouTube Shorts, Clubhouse, Meet

This week there are updates for YouTubers, web creators and more.

Note: if you received an email yesterday that one or more of your Blogger posts were removed for violating the “Malware and Viruses”, as of this writing Blogger is working on a fix. 

Upcoming

• May 18-20: are you ready for Google I/O? Register to set up your schedule and sign up for networking and other live events. Or if you rather just watch on YouTube, the Keynote live stream begins at 9:40AM on May 18th. Be sure to check out the official playlists of scheduled Google I/O Keynotes and I/O Sessions. I’m looking forward to the Google Search Central sessions: Prepare for the page Experience update, Immersive storytelling on the web, What’s new in Search and Core Web Vitals AMA.
• May 27: Google Marketing Livestream will look at the “Future of marketing”, including how to use privacy-safe techniques for measurement of advertising performance.

YouTube

• YouTube announced the Shorts Creator Fund, which will distribute $100 million in 2021 and 2022 to creators with the most viewed Shorts. This will not be limited to channels in the YouTube Partner Program.
• YouTube is also testing ads between Shorts, although that does not sound like it will be a way for Partners to monetize the short (under one minute) vertical videos.
• YouTube is rolling out Clips to more channels. Clips lets you link to a short segment of video, like so. There is also a new view counter for Clips.

Web Creators

• Google has a new Web Stories Playbook and design kit in Figma to help incorporate Web Stories into your website.
• The latest version of Lighthouse - one of the Chrome DevTools debugging tools - can help you measure and understand your site’s Core Web Vitals.
• If you have been using the classic version of Google Sites, you will need to transition to new Sites by the end of the year.

Audio

• Clubhouse has finally released their official Android app in beta. It's currently missing a number of features including Club creation and management, updating your name, payments, topic following and other features. And you still need a current Clubhouse user to invite you to join.
• Discord announced “Stage Discovery”, a way to easily explore “Stage Channels” audio events on the platform. They are also testing paid tickets for “extra, extra special” audio events.

Meetings

• Third party extensions can cause problems in Google Meet, especially extensions designed to add or change Meet features and functionality. Learn what that may look like, and try disabling extensions if you run into a problem..
• Nina Trankova has a tour of Google Meet, showing the new interface for Google Workspace features.
• Skype now lets you name your video calls, including emojis. That can be used with the Skype “Meet Now”, which lets you create a free video call that can have 99 guests, up to 24 hours long, with no sign-ups required.

Productivity

• Google is changing the way Google Docs renders documents. While that should not affect the features in Docs, it may cause some 3rd party extensions to stop working (or not work correctly).

More around the web

• @azusagakuyuki is the popular Twitter account of a beautiful young Japanese woman who posts selfies while motorcycling around Japan. The twist? The poster is actually a 50-year-old man (with nice hair) who uses FaceApp to alter his face in photos. Surprisingly when he revealed his true face he got even more followers. Washington Post has the story.
• Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed News looks at how influencers on TikTok are driving the rise in popularity of complicated and sweet Starbucks orders. “It’s no longer a coffee place.”

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.

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