Weekly Update - July 24, 2021: Olympics, YouTube, AdSense

The 2020 Olympics kicked off this week in Tokyo. While I am not sure it’s a good idea they are going ahead, I am looking forward to it. I like it all, from gymnastics, to track, to horse jumping. Once every four (or five) years I watch all the sports.

Of course big tech is jumping in:

• Google has a cute interactive Doodle with multiple games, created together with Japanese animation studio STUDIO 4C.  Click here to start playing.
• On YouTube you can get highlights and clips on the official Olympics channel and regional news channels (such as CBC Sports).
• Facebook has an Olympics portal with information and posts.
• Instagram has Olympics-related AR effects in Stories and Reels.
• Twitter has Event Pages by sport and country, with top Tweets from trusted accounts. It also lets you Tweet #ExpertEngine @Olympics and a sporting event hashtag, such as #basketball or #swimming, and you will receive a video reply to help you learn about the sport. Plus there are special emoji, Topics and highlights on the Explore tab. Learn more.
• Microsoft’s Bing browser will let you quickly find schedules, medal counts and more by searching for “Tokyo Summer Games”.

This week’s top updates:

• AdSense has released a new version of AdSense ad code. This updated code can improve performance of ads on your site. It is optional to update the code on your site and you don’t need to take any action.
• YouTube launched “Super Thanks”, which lets viewers say “thank you” for a video by tipping up to $50. This automatically posts a highlighted “Thanks!” comment. It is similar to Super Chats and Super Stickers for live chats, but this is only available on videos on demand. Currently it’s only available on a few monetized channels, but it should roll out more widely in the coming months. If you are a YouTube Partner, check your monetization “Supers” tab to see if it is available on your channel.
• Any unlisted videos uploaded to YouTube before January 1, 2017 were made private on July 23. Videos uploaded after that date have URLs that are harder for people to discover, so they are more secure. This also affected unlisted playlists created under the old system. If you did not opt out, you have four options: keep the video private, switch the video back to legacy unlisted with the same URL (which is not as secure as the current URL system), make it public, or re-upload it as a new unlisted video.
• Clubhouse, the social audio platform, is out of beta and open to everyone. Since their initial launch, Twitter, Facebook and several other platforms have launched copycat services. Will Clubhouse survive? Only time will tell.

Upcoming

• July 28: Navigating the Future of Work with Google Workspace
• July 28: Zoom Academy 2021
• July 30: Tangi, Area 120’s short DIY video social sharing site, will shut down. It was an experiment, and the experiment is over.

Read on for more updates for web publishers, creating presentations, and more.

YouTube

• Finally! YouTube is launching the ability to translate comments in the coming weeks. It will initially only be available in the YouTube mobile app.
• YouTube is promoting the Shorts video editor with the BTS #PermissionToDance challenge. You have until August 23 to share your video. BTS will highlight their favorites in a compilation video.
  

Web Publishers

• Posts on Google - which let verified celebrities, bands and so forth post to their Knowledge Panel - was discontinued on July 20. This does not affect posts by local businesses.
• If you see a drop in search traffic for your website in Google Search Console, a new article explains how to analyze and understand the data.
• If you host videos on your website, Google has a new easier way to identify “key moments” in the video. Key moments let people jump to a specific point in your video from search. Note that you do not need to do this if you are embedding YouTube videos on your site.
• Google Search Central’s latest #AskGooglebot episode answers the question: Is it OK to use shared hosting for your website? The short answer is yes, that’s fine. Watch the video for details.
• Google Search now shows more information on the About This Result panel about why you got a particular result. For example it may list terms that appear in the result, the language or relevance to your location.
• WordPress 5.8 Tatum is now available, with new template tools, new support for WebP images and more.
• If your blog is hosted at wordpress.com, try the newly improved image carousel. It is focused on improved photo viewing on mobile devices.

Productivity

• In Google Chat you can now open and edit a Google Slides presentation in side-by-side view.
• Now when you create a theme for Google Slides, you can add image placeholders. The person using the theme can insert their image in the placeholder space.
• You can now block other users in Google Drive. This lets you block someone who is sending spam or abusive content.
• You can now select multiple tabs in Google Sheets and perform actions like hiding, deleting, or coloring.

More

• Zoom launched Zoom Events, a platform that lets you “build, host, and manage a virtual or hybrid event.” It handles management of multiple sessions, ticketing, a “lobby” with chat and more.
• Instagram has added a “Sensitive Content Control” that lets you set how much sensitive content you see in Explore.
• You can now join group video calls after they have started on WhatsApp.

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: Created from Olympic rings image by robert1029 from Pixabay. Free for commercial use.