Weekly Update - November 13, 2021: YouTube hides dislikes, Twitter Blue, Lightship AR Platform

The big news this week is that YouTube no longer displays dislike counts on videos (but you can still dislike). There are also new features for creators who use StreamYard, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, Clubhouse Rooms and more.

Beyond creator tools, Twitter Blue subscriptions, with fancy Twitter features, are now more widely available. And there are updates to the metaverse and live stream shopping (prediction for 2022:metaverse shopping).

Top Updates

• YouTube stopped displaying dislike counts on videos. You can still dislike a video, which will help tune your recommendations. The channel owner will see the video dislike numbers in Analytics in YouTube Studio, but the numbers are not publicly visible. YouTube tested this earlier this year, and found a decrease in dislike attacks, which disproportionately affect smaller creators. The response has been mixed, but I think it’s a positive change. As I noted on Twitter, there is no way to tell if a dislike means the person dislikes the creator, or the topic, or the video itself, and in my experience has not been a reliable way to determine what content to watch.
• Twitter Blue, Twitter’s paid subscription, is now available in the United States and New Zealand, in addition to Australia and Canada. Features include “Undo Tweet”, “Top Articles” with the most shared articles in your network, Bookmark folders, custom navigation, and ad free US news sites (including Washington Post, LA Times and The Atlantic). Plus it includes early access to features like longer video uploads and pinned conversations.
• Niantic, creator of Pokemon Go and other AR games, launched the Lightship “real-world metaverse” Platform. This gives developers access to augmented reality tools. The vision is a bit different from Facebook’s headset-bound metaverse. As CEO John Hanke put it, the technology is meant to help “draw people into the world, not isolate them from it”. That’s an appealing future.

YouTube and Video

• There is a new YouTube Help Community for Arabic-speaking creators and fans. You can find it at yt.be/help/arabic.
• The StreamYard video streaming platform has a number of new features, including teams (co-hosts and admins), Picture in Picture layout, embedding recordings, organized video library of your recordings, bulk uploads, stream directly to Twitter, hotkeys (for easier stream management) and increased recording limits (6 hours). That's a lot!

Web Creators

• You can now copy a single page or subset of pages from a Google Sites site into a new site.

Creators on Social Media

• Clubhouse launched Replays. These are Room recordings that Clubhouse users can listen to any time, and the host can download to repurpose on other platforms. Room counts will include recording listeners.
• If you Tweet a single image, people will see the full image, rather than a cropped view, when scrolling through their timeline. This is now available on Android and iOS for everyone.
• Instagram announced two new audio tools for Reels videos: voice effects and text to speech. The tools are available in the Reels editor.
• Meta announced a new Creative App Platform for Facebook. This lets people discover creative apps like Picsart or Camera360 in Facebook Stories, and when using those apps easily share creations to Facebook.
• The new TikTok Creative Exchange matches marketers with select creators. This is designed to better aim promotional content to TikTok’s users, who “value authenticity”.

‘Tis the Season for Shopping

• YouTube’s Holiday Stream and Shop (November 15-22) will feature a wide variety of creators, from Manny MUA (make-up) to Gordon Ramsay (chef).
• Facebook is getting more shopping options: Shops in Groups, Product Recommendations in Groups (making it easy to shop recommended items), and Top Product Mentions in your News Feed from groups you are a member of. Plus Live Shopping for creators is coming soon.

Advertising

• Facebook will be removing Detailed Targeting of ads related to sensitive topics, such as health causes, sexual orientation, religious groups and political beliefs. Detailed Targeting categorizes users by demographics, their mobile device, pages and ads they engage with and other details. Those types of ads can still run if they are more broadly targeted.

Just for fun

• Try the new Google Arts & Culture Pet Portraits that matches a photo of your pet - dog, cat, fish, bird, reptile, horse, or rabbit - with their double in a work of art.

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: November 11 was Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in Canada, Australia, UK and the rest of the British Commonwealth. Poppies are for remembrance. Poppy Field in France by NadineDoerle on Pixabay (free to use, no attribution required)