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Weekly Update - October 2, 2021: YouTube Policy, Meet Translations, Google Search AI


This week YouTube banned all vaccine misinformation, Google Meet launched automatically-translated live captions (in beta), and at the Google “Search On 2021” event the company announced improved visual search using MUM AI and Google Lens.

In social media Clubhouse now lets you share audio clips and offer room Replays, Twitter launched Professional Profiles for businesses, and Facebook is under fire (again).

Plus there are more updates for video creators, new productivity features and more.

Top Stories

AI in Google Search

This week was Google’s “Search On 2021” event, where they announced upcoming advances to Google Search. The MUM AI is making Search smarter, and the results are getting more visual.

Are you making short vertical videos yet?

YouTube and Video

Communication

Social Media

  • Popular image sharing site Imgur has been acquired by MediaLab. That puts Imgur in the company of Kik, Whisper, and Genius. James Vincent at The Verge suggests that MediaLab’s business model is “acquiring ailing brands with sizable, but stagnant, communities. Presumably, the goal is to bundle together traffic from these properties to sell ads or data, while cutting costs by sharing the work of keeping the sites running.” Not a great sign for Imgur’s active users.
  • Clubhouse has made it easier to find and share content. They introduced Universal Search for rooms, the ability to create and share 30 second audio Clips, and audio-on-demand recorded Replays. This may give the platform a boost.
  • Twitter opened up Professional Profiles to businesses in the US. If your business has a physical location, you can apply. Professional Profiles have an “About” module with the business address, hours of operation and a “Contact” button. Twitter may also offer business features like Twitter Ads, shopping and more. Twitter plans to offer more Professional Profile types, including Creators.
  • David Bloom at Tubefilter takes a look at Facebook’s response to The Wall Street Journal’s recent series based on leaked internal documents, and likens it to “running their own disinformation campaign.

Productivity

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.

Image: Marigolds by Shiebi AL from Pexels, free for commercial use.

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