Weekly Update - July 17, 2021: YouTube, AdSense, Twitter

😀🎉 Happy World Emoji Day! This week there are tons of updates for creators on YouTube, the web, and social media.

Top stories this week:

AdSense will start showing Anchor Ads on wider screens starting July 19. That means the formerly mobile ads (which stick to the top of the page) will start showing on desktop. You can turn off this option in your Auto Ads settings. I have Anchor ads enabled, and I’m going to leave this option on to see how well it performs.
The YouTube Shorts video editor is now available worldwide. Make sure you have the latest version of the YouTube Mobile app, then tap the Create icon. You can use music, original audio from other videos, and record your own video (up to 60 seconds). And you can add multiple video clips. Learn how to create a Short.
YouTube Clips is now available on gaming channels with at least 1000 subscribers. You can use clips to share highlights up to 60 seconds long from a video. The Clip is not a new video. It’s a pointer to the original video with the clipped segment highlighted. Learn how clips work. You can also opt your channel out of Clips in Settings in YouTube Studio.
There are two new features to improve your YouTube live stream chat: polls in live chat and subscriber-only chat.
Twitter Fleets - Twitter’s answer to Stories - are being retired on August 3. That’s less than a year after rolling out the feature globally. Why? Because it was meant to encourage users who aren’t posting Tweets to “join the conversation”, but that didn’t happen. The top of the timeline will show Spaces (audio rooms) instead.

Read on for more updates

YouTube is launching automatic video chapters. Those are the time-stamped labels that sh.w on the YouTube video player. You can opt out individual videos or your entire channel in Settings.
YouTube has a new article with best practices for creating content aimed at kids.

Chrome is adding an optional “HTTPS-First Mode” in version M94. This will attempt to load all web pages as HTTPS. It will display a full-page warning if the site does not support HTTPS. If you have not updated your blog or website to HTTPS now is the time to do that.
Google Ad Manager and AdMob accounts have an updated Privacy & Messaging tab that lets you keep up with privacy regulations, configure ad serving, and create GDPR and CCPA consent and opt-out messages.
If you are using an older Blogger theme, you may notice that the quick edit tools have been removed from your blog’s sidebar. The alternative is to edit sidebar gadgets in your blog’s Layout settings.
In the latest episode of #AskGooglebot John Mueller explains how best to handle affiliate links on your website.
Automattic, WordPress’s parent company, has acquired popular podcast app Pocket Casts. They will be exploring building “deep integrations” between WordPress and Pocket Casts in the future.

Facebook will be investing over $1 billion in creators through the end of 2022. They will be offering bonuses on Facebook and Instagram to creators that reach certain milestones, try new features or have well-performing content.
Facebook has a new explainer on how their news feed works.
Instagram now lets you save Stories drafts, so you can create the Story post and then publish at a different time.
Twitter now lets you change who can reply to your Tweets after the Tweet is published. So if you have a Tweet that is attracting unwanted comments, you can switch to allowing only people that you follow reply.

You can now blur or replace your background in Google Meet on your iOS device. This option was already available on Android devices.
Google Meet for Google Glass Enterprise Edition is now available (in beta) to all Google Workspace customers. This lets technicians, trainers and tour guides share a real-time view of what they see in a Meet conference.
There are no new emoji for World Emoji Day, but Google has redesigned a number of emoji. The emoji will be available in Gmail and Chat beginning this month.
Facebook Messenger introduced “soundmojis”, which lets you include sound effects or short audio clips to emojis. It’s features like this that make me turn off the speakers on my phone.

Google is launching Drive for Desktop, which replaces Backup and Sync (for consumer users) and Drive File Stream (business users). Drive for Desktop lets you upload and sync photos and videos to Google Photos and/or Google Drive, sync external storage devices to the cloud and mirror Drive files on your desktop.

You can now require an account verification step to view your Google Search History. That way someone who shares your device will not be able to see that information. Google is also starting to roll out an option to delete the last 15 minutes of your search history with a single tap.

Mozilla’s Pocket bookmarking and content saving service also offers recommendations and collections of articles. Mozilla explains how the recommendations are human curated, so the stories aren’t just click bait. I use the Pocket extension to see new stories when I open an new browser wi#ndow, and it’s true that the quality is generally high.

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

Image: Tomatoes by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay. Free for commercial use.

Peggy K's Creator News