Creator Weekly: Bluesky Video, YouTube Shorts Add Yours, Google Search links to Wayback Machine

This week there are a bunch of smaller updates, with a little something for everyone, from YouTube to search to social media. Which do I think are the most interesting? Video uploads on Bluesky, the YouTube Shorts “Add Yours” sticker and new YouTube handles languages, NotebookLM’s podcast-style overviews, Google Search linking results to the Internet Archive cache, and the new Apple Intelligence AI features.

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New Tips and Tutorials

Last Sunday I hosted a discussion with my OnEBoard colleagues about video editing on mobile devices. Watch the discussion replay. And set yourself a reminder for upcoming OnEBoard’s live tips.

To Do & Try

There’s a fun new option for YouTube Shorts: add the “Add Yours” sticker to encourage your viewers to create a video with the same theme. All the Shorts created from the Add Yours on your Short can be found on a dedicated page. Watch to see how it works.

Are you on Threads? Have you connected your profile to the Fediverse? If not, click this link to jump directly to your Fediverse settings:www.threads.net/settings/account/fediverse . Once you have that enabled, anyone in the Fediverse can follow your Threads profile and respond to your posts.

NotebookLM (notebooklm.google.com) Google’s free experimental AI tool that lets you upload your own documents to answer questions and create summaries. It now can generate a podcast-like Audio Overview of your documents. How is that different from an audio version of an AI-generated summary? Google says “two AI hosts start up a lively “deep dive” discussion based on your sources. They summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.” Sounds like a podcast to me! Learn more about Audio Overviews. Uploaded sources can be Google Docs, Google Slides, PDF or text files up to 500,000 words.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

You can now set your YouTube channel’s handle in one of 75 different languages, including a mix of scripts (like Japanese and English). There are some limitations: other than supported alphabet letters and numbers, the only characters a handle can include are underscores (_), hyphens (-), periods (.), and Latin middle dots (·). It also cannot be “URL-like” or “phone number-like”. In most languages there is a 30 character limit, but may be less. YouTube also notes that third party sites may not support handles in all languages.

If you offer Memberships on your YouTube channel, check out Creator Insider’s latest mythbusting video: "Will Giving Members Early Access to a Video Hurt its Performance After it's Public?"

Ashley Carman @ Bloomberg reports that Spotify is offering big money to some YouTube podcast creators to upload their shows to Spotify as well. It seems the deals aren’t exclusive, and the goal is to get more video content on the platform. One potential issue? The type of advertising available may not be optimal. Read the article for details about why podcasters prefer dynamically inserted ads.

Twitch no longer allows “Waiting Room” streams that only feature another channel’s content, without b any reaction or other original content.

Is it worth it? Zach Bussey reports Twitch's New DJ Program Fees Exposed! (YouTube link)

Nathan Grayson @ Aftermath reports: A Year Of Hard Lessons For Twitch And Its CEO

Web Publishers and Search

At the beginning of the year Google Search removed the option to see the cached version of a web page in the search results. This week they have added the option to check for saved versions of the site in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. To find that option: 3 dot icon next to search result > “More about this page” > “See previous versions on Internet Archive’s Wayback machine”.

In the US, different states have different privacy regulations. You can set up the AdSense Privacy & Messaging tool to show the appropriate message to visitors from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, and just announced, Montana, Oregon and Texas. (Yes, I think the US should have a federal web privacy law!). The IAB’s Global Privacy Platform for the US is also supported.

You can adjust your settings by signing in to AdSense > Privacy & Messaging > US State Regulations > Manage. For existing messages open the settings and click “Targeting” to add more states. Learn more.
Note: if you use AdSense for YouTube, you won’t have these settings.

If you are thinking about running a paid promotion of your YouTube video, YouTube shared a brief overview of who it’s for and how it works. When you promote a video, the first step is to indicate the main goal of the promotion. There are three options: more engagement with your channel, more views of your videos, and a new goal: website visits. You can easily set it up on the Content > Promotions tab in YouTube Studio.

For web publishers monetizing with AdSense in languages other than English: Related Search for AdSense Auto Ads is now available in French, Spanish, Japanese, German and English.

Google Search Central has a new video series on how to use Google Trends to inform your content or marketing strategies.

New emoji and Unicode symbols have just been released. It will take a while for the new emoji to roll out to different platforms and devices. But you can use them in your projects or on your website now by installing the Google Noto Color Emoji or Noto Emoji font.

Ghost blog & newsletter platform users can now collect tips and donations by linking Stripe to their account.

Beehiiv hosted a webinar on “Content that Kills” (in a good way). Watch the video recording.

Social Media

Bluesky now lets you upload videos to the platform. Videos can be up to 60 seconds long and you can attach subtitles. You can upload up to 25 videos or 10 GB per day. And it can include legal adult content, as long as it is labeled as such. Videos play automatically in the feed, unless you turn that off in your account settings.

If you use OpenVibe to follow your Bluesky and Mastodon accounts, you can now also follow Bluesky content feeds.

Buffer now lets you schedule threaded posts to Mastodon.

Meta is changing the way it labels “AI” content, again. This version is more friendly to photographers who use AI-powered editing tools to adjust their photos. Earlier this year Meta started labeling Instagram, Threads and Facebook images that had been created or edited with AI tools as “Made with AI”, even if only tiny changes were made to the original image. In July they changed to a clickable “AI Info” label that could be clicked for more details. Now, if the image or video was “modified or edited” with AI tools, the AI Info label is in the post’s menu. Only images and video generated using AI will have the “AI Info” label directly on the image.

Taylor Lorenz asks Why is Instagram Reels so unhinged? Watch on YouTube.

Kyle Chayka @ New Yorker: The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump

Connect to the Fediverse: Doc Pop explains how to connect your WordPress site and Threads now makes it easy to jump to your Fediverse settings at www.threads.net/settings/account/fediverse (click this if you have a Threads profile).

There seems to be a new Threads setting for “Political Content” that is independent of your setting on Instagram. You can turn off suggested political content from accounts you do not follow.

Katie Notopoulos @ Business Insider: Rage bait is all the rage on Threads — so I tried it. I'm sorry? She did find that Threads seems to promote posts with lots of comments, rather than likes. She sums it up:
“Threads seems to have a lot of users whose primary exposure to social media is Instagram. Nice, decent, normal people who still retain a shred of human decency and haven't blown out their dopamine receptors from years of shitposting on other, less-savory platforms. The fact that Threads users are not all brain-rotted Twitter refugees is probably a good thing overall! It also means that they're easy marks for engagement-baiters who are pulling out the same tricks they used on other platforms in the past.”

Lindsey Gamble reports two updates to LinkedIn newsletters and articles: You can highlight text, and then “Share Quote” in a new post of your own, and now the “More Articles for You” section under a newsletter or article will show content from other people (which is nice for readers, not so great for posters).

Meta, TikTok and Snap are teaming up with the Mental Health Coalition to create Thrive, a program that lets tech companies help each other identify and stop the spread of graphic suicide and self harm content.

Cohost one of the many Twitter alternatives that launched in 2022 will be shutting down. It was trying to support the platform with paid subscriptions, but it’s being reported that as of March they only had 30,000 monthly active users and roughly 2600 paid subscribers. That’s not enough to keep it going.

Communication and Collaboration

Google Meet can now integrate with TeamViewer to create secure remote sessions, which is useful for IT support. You need to install the TeamViewer Remote Google Workspace add-on, then follow these instructions from TeamViewer. You can use TeamViewer free for 30 days, but after that you need a paid license. This is available to both Google Workspace and free Google Accounts.

Google Chat is adding a Shared tab to 1:1 and group messages. This shows files, links, photos and videos shared in the chat. This has been available in Spaces since last March.

Google shared tips for using Gemini in Gmail. Gemini in Gmail is available to personal accounts with a subscription to the Google One AI Premium plan or Google Workspace Labs.

Chrome will soon sync and share your tab groups across devices.

Google announced new features in Chrome to keep browsing more secure, including Safety Check running in the background, performing tasks like removing permissions from sites you no longer visit and removing unwanted website permissions. There is also an option to give a site one time access to your camera or microphone.

More AI Updates and News

Apple Intelligence - Apples “AI” - will be rolling out in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia 15.1 next month. Some of the features:

Writing Tools to rewrite, proofread and summarize (Mail, Notes, Pages, 3rd party apps)
In Photos create Memories video by writing a description.
In Photos the Cleanup Tool removes objects in the background.
Record, transcribe and summarize audio in the Notes and Phone app.
Summarized notifications across apps.
Siri and Writing Tools will also be able to use ChatGPT.

Adobe updated their progress on the Firefly Video Model, which will be available in beta later this year and eventually integrated into Premiere Pro. It looks pretty impressive, and Adobe says it’s “commercially safe”. They are touting it as a way to generate B-roll video from text prompts, brainstorm or fill in gaps in a longer video. It has detailed controls for the camera angle, motion and zoom. Click the link to join the waitlist.

Adobe Stock has updated its policies to prohibit content that is titled to suggest it shows a newsworthy event. They have also increased their human and automated content moderation.

Adobe Stock will be adding generative AI tools to adjust existing stock images. They say creators will benefit as that should encourage more people to license the content.

Google’s DataGemma models integrate reliable data from Data Commons into the Gemma AI model to reduce hallucinations.

The Verge reports Amazon is allowing Audible narrators to clone themselves with AI

!! Meta fed its AI on everything adults have publicly posted since 2007

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