Weekly Update: June 5, 2021: YouTube Analytics, Twitter, Google Meet

This week there are updates for YouTube creators, web publishers, Meet conferencers, Docs users and more. Plus Twitterers in Canada and Australia can subscribe to Twitter Blue to get that sweet “Undo Tweet” feature and organize Bookmarks.

Tutorial

• FeedBurner’s RSS to email service will end July 1. You can remove the Follow by Email gadget from your Blogger blog to prevent people from signing up. And no, before you ask, I haven't decided on a replacement for my own email list yet.

Join us!

• Join OnEBoard for the premiere of Spring 2021 video on Sunday, June 6. It includes photos contributed by OnEBoard members from around the world.

YouTube and Video

• YouTube launched new metrics in Analytics to better understand your channel’s Membership stats. To be eligible for Memberships your channel must have at least 1000 subscribers and be in the YouTube Partner Program.
• If your YouTube channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, and your revenue increases or declines because of a geographic shift in your audience to a lower or higher CPM country, that will now be called out in your Analytics.
• More YouTube Analytics updates: detailed Post stats are now available, video performance explanations are now more visible, and the “other channels” and “other videos your audience watched” cards are available on mobile.
• If you are in Germany, you should be aware of the State Media Treaty (MStV) ban on political advertising who are ”providers of broadcast-like telemedia”. This likely applies to most YouTube creators in Germany. If you are monetizing, YouTube recommends you disable the “Politics” category of ads in your AdSense account.
• Vimeo announced a number of updates: better automatically-selected thumbnails with AVIF compression technology to make the images smaller and load faster, more creator features in the Android and iOS mobile apps, and Vimeo Record that lets you record video and/or screencasts to help you work with your team.
• Twitch now lets you select from more than 350 new tags related to gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, mental health and more to label your content and make it more discoverable. Twitter also announced a new policy that they may preemptively suspend accounts that “pose a high likelihood of inciting violence.”
• Your questions have (maybe) been answered about YouTube search and discovery.

Publishers

• If you use Google Ad Manager to display ads on your own website, there is a new Manual Experiments option that lets you run tests to improve your revenue.
• Blogging can feel lonely sometimes. Just ask Donald Trump, who shut down his blog less than a month after launch due to lack of readership and “engagements” (at least relative to prior social media engagement levels).

Communications

• Google Meet now shows a “gentle notification” when there is a performance issue, and will provide tailored troubleshooting recommendations.

Privacy and Security

• If you use Enhanced Safe Browsing in Chrome, there are improved protections against potentially malicious extensions and downloads.
• Firefox has a new design for desktop and mobile, with streamlined menus and improved notifications. And what they call “Total Cookie Protection” is now on by default in private browsing mode. That prevents cookies from tracking you from one site to another.

Productivity

• You can customize the color of Google Drive folders in shared drives and folder shortcuts, in addition to your folders in My Drive.
• If you are using a Chromebook, you can now save Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for offline access in the Files app.
• It is now easier to navigate comments in Google Sheets files.
• Paul Bakaus has an easy tip for extracting images, GIFs and other elements from your Google Slides deck. (tl;dr export as a PowerPoint file, then extract the zip file)

Social Media

• Twitter launched its paid subscription offering - “Twitter Blue” - in Australia and Canada. Features include “Undo Tweet” which gives you 30 seconds to undo a Tweet or reply before it posts, Bookmark folders to organize saved Tweets, “Reader Mode” to make it easier to read long threads, access to customer support and more perks. They seem like nice features, but I’m not sure they are worth $3.49CAD/$4.49AUD a month.
• Twitter is also launching Fleet ads, which are “full screen billboards” for advertisers. It was nice to have Fleets ad free for a while, but that couldn’t last.
• Facebook will now evaluate content posted by politicians with the same rules that apply to everyone else.
• TikTok has a new page promoting its accessibility features, including automatic captions, turning off animated thumbnails and more.

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: Tuesday, June 8, is World Oceans Day. There are many virtual educational events, plus a photo competition. Photo of jellyfish by Magda Ehlers from Pexels (free for commercial use).