Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts, Threads Moderation Woes, Meet Beta, Docs Tabs

Happy Saturday all! I hope any of you in Florida made it through the latest storms.

This week there are multiple updates for YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and bloggers, plus a major update to Google Docs, an Authenticity app from Adobe and an opportunity to beta test Google Meet features.

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What do you know about longer YouTube Shorts? Take this week’s quiz.

To Do & Try

If you use Google Meet on your Android device, you can join the Meet Android Beta program to test features before they are publicly available and submit feedback to Google. Learn more about the beta program. There are big changes coming to Meet, with the migration from legacy Meet calling (Duo calling) to the new Meet calling.

Create unlisted YouTube playlists to share a group of videos or embed them on your own website or blog without having the playlist appear on your YouTube channel. Check out the demo from the latest OnEBoard Tech Topic live stream.

Google Workspace is running a contest (watch the video to the end). Share an example of you’ve used Gemini for Google Workspace on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, X or Facebook and you could win a Pixel 9 Pro or trip to Google Cloud Next. Just be sure to tag @GoogleWorkspace.

Flickr shared how they are “putting history on the map” with historical photos in Flickr Commons. The Flickr Commons explorer has a map feature that lets yo u find historical photos from all around the world on the map. Zoom in to find photos of a specific area.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube Studio Mobile now supports rotation to landscape view for both Android and iOS. This is great if you use a tablet! (more information from Creator Insider)

YouTube viewers on iOS and Android can search from the comments. Look for the blue bold text next to a magnifying glass icon and click to see more content related to that term. For long form videos, the video will keep playing in a miniplayer while you browse results. In the Shorts feed, results will only be Shorts.

Starting this month, channels may no longer need to be registered with Google News to appear on the YouTube News shelf. Learn more about what YouTube looks for in authoritative news sources and how News on YouTube works. They use a combination of “machine learning techniques” and human evaluators to identify news sources.

YouTube launched Shorts Templates. When you see a Short that inspires you, click the Remix button, then choose Use Template. You can add your own clips to the Template, but use the audio segment timing and text. Anyone can create a template by creating and uploading a Short. (more information from Creator Insider). Watch how Templates work.

The new YouTube Shorts Trends button is rolling out. It looks like a flame on the top of Shorts videos. Click that button to open a “Trends” page, with videos grouped by music used. You can then tap a button to create your own Short.

YouTube is testing a “Save” button in the Shorts player that lets you add the Short to a playlist of your choice. The Dislike button is moved, not removed. In this experiment, the Dislike button is under the 3 dot menu icon. Tap that and select Dislike 👎 from the menu to dislike the Short. This will be seen by a small number of viewers on mobile.

For monetizing YouTube creators: YouTube Creator Liaison Rene Ritchie interviewed Thomas Kim, Director of Creator Monetization. Watch the video. They talk about how the aim is mutual success for YouTube and creators, the expanded Partner Program for fan funding, new Jewels & Gifts for vertical live streams, advertiser friendly guidelines and policy violations, how ads are placed, events and more (it’s a lot, but worth watching!).

If you are in the YouTube Partner Program and wondering when you get paid, check out this new FAQ: YouTube Earnings Payment Timelines - When Do I Get Paid?

Twitch has added Enforcement Notes to its Community Guidelines, which explain how each policy is being enforced with regards to current trends. For example, an Enforcement Note explains how the nudity policy applies to VTubers (accounts using a virtual avatar). This seems like a good way to make policies more transparent and understandable.

To support creators on World Mental Health Day, TikTok shared steps they are taking to support creator mental well-being, including access to the Headspace app for a small number of creators. They also suggest reviewing the TikTok digital well-being guide.

StreamYard now captions and transcribes videos in French, German, Italian and Polish, in addition to English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Web Publishers and Search

Not surprisingly the WordPress-versus-WP Engine related drama has continued. You can read up on what’s been happening here. What happened this week?

A checkbox was added to the sign-in page on WordPress(dot)org for people to declare they are not “affiliated” with WP Engine “financially or otherwise”, but it doesn’t explain what “affiliated” means. WordPress project contributors are not happy to have to declare something so vague. Matt Mullenweg says he wants people to pick a side. This also applies to anyone wanting to post a question on the WordPress support forums.
David Heinemeier Hanson wrote Automattic is doing open source dirty
Vinny Green launched FreeWP a new news media “powerhouse” dedicated to the WordPress community, but that was announced as a fork of WordPress by Matt Mullenweg (it’s not a fork of WordPress). Discussion on Reddit.
Matt Mullenweg (photomatt) and his attorney did an impromptu Q&A on Hacker News. Discussion on Reddit.
WPGraphQL plugin developer Jason Bahl moved, along with his plugin, from WP Engine to Automattic, and it will become a canonical plugin. His announcement has a whole paragraph asking people to treat him with respect and as a human even if they disagree with the whole dispute (which is a lousy thing to have to ask).

Blogger Product Expert Adam explains how to keep your comment section clear of spam.

Beehiiv has added a custom paywall option. If you have a paid newsletter, you can send paid posts to free subscribers, and set what amount of the post is visible free.

The Internet Archive is under attack. Just a few weeks ago, Google announced that Search results would link to the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” cached version of a site. That has been down since October 9, when hackers defaced the site, and launched a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. The latest update is that the data is safe, and the site should be restored in a few days.

Photos and Image Design

Adobe announced the Adobe Content Authenticity web app that lets creators apply Content Credentials to images, audio and video files. The Content Credentials metadata can include name, website, and social media accounts. It uses a combination of invisible watermarking and “cryptographically signed” metadata to keep the Credentials intact, even if someone takes a screenshot. You can sign up for the waitlist here. Adobe is also releasing a Chrome extension that can be used to view Content Credentials of images on any site. You can install the beta of that extension today from the Chrome Web Store.

In September, Canva significantly raised their prices for accounts with Teams. This week they walked that back a bit. Now early adopters of Canva Teams will be able to keep their original pricing. They also make a “Pricing Promise” to always have affordable plans, give at least 60 days notice of pricing changes, with no hidden fees.

Social Media

X is changing its creator monetization program from ad revenue sharing to a new payment system based on engagement. Monetizing X posters will be paid based on “genuine interactions from Premium users”. X doesn’t say why they are making the change, or if it is related to declining ad revenue. This means to earn, X monetizers will have to encourage their fans and followers to pay for an X subscription. And this sounds like it will encourage engagement-bait type posts, which are often pretty annoying. I do wonder if more X creators will set up direct Subscriptions, since most of that revenue goes to the creator.

Social Media Today reports that X is no longer banned in Brazil, after the company paid the required fines and removed the user accounts they had originally refused to remove.

Threads head Adam Mosseri acknowledged that they have “seen an increase in engagement-bait on Threads” and they are “working to get it under control.” He didn’t share any details about how they might do that, but the Threads algorithm does seem to favor posts with more comments, so maybe a tweak there?

Crackergate was trending on Threads this week. What is that? Threads’ hyper-sensitive moderation system was removing posts with the word “cracker”. That can be used in a derogatory way, sure, but it’s probably more frequently used to refer to the food item. And users had plenty more examples of innocuous posts being flagged and removed. Adam Mosseri finally acknowledged this issue, and said they found issues, including a problem where human reviewers weren’t provided with context of posts. Although that doesn’t explain why they were removed in the first place.

Meanwhile the much smaller social platform Bluesky joined Threads to tout its customizable moderation, share starter pack lists, announce new features, and snark a little.

For more background on Bluesky, founder and CEO Jay Graber was interviewed on the Flipboard Dot Social show. It’s almost an hour long, and full of information, but the theme is “Make Identity Central Again”.

Lindsey Gamble reports that Instagram has updated drafts to let you rename a draft and easily schedule a draft to go live in the future.

The latest version of Mastodon has a new feature that lets you (optionally) filter notifications from people you don’t follow, people who aren’t following you, new or moderated accounts. They have also redesigned the post composer, making it easier to use, and letting you rearrange uploaded media. And they have improved the recommendation system to help new users find people to follow. Plus publications can feature an article author’s Mastodon profile in article previews and website embeds have a fresh look.

Tumblr published a “State of the Community” report, aimed at marketers. A takeaway: 62% of GenZ agree, "When it comes to social media, there is too much media and not enough social." Notable to me is the quirky design of the report website.

If you are creating content for Halloween (or just want to create a trendy costume), Pinterest has Halloween trends for you. They include Gothic Glam, Beastly Beauty, Spooky Sports, copying your favorite pop icon looks, TV and movie inspired costumes, vintage decor and more.

Twitter alternative Cohost is shutting down on December 31. It went read-only on October 1.

Communication and Collaboration

Features are available to free accounts unless otherwise noted.

Google Docs now lets you add document tabs to more easily organize and navigate long documents. The Tabs navigation is on the left sidebar in the Google Doc. Each tab can be labeled with an emoji and can have sub-tabs. Headers in the document for particular Tab are listed under the tab name. And you can link to the individual tabs. It’s like having multiple small documents inside one large document. I’ve been using this and it’s really excellent!

Google Forms low lets you ask for ratings, such as picking one to five stars. You can get the average submitted rating and distribution of ratings on the Form responses tab.

In Google Sheets you can now add 3rd-party smart chips. You first need to add the 3rd-party parner’s add-on from Google Workspace Marketplace. I’ll note that the illustration in the article shows turning a Canva link into a smart chip, but I don’t see Canva integration for Sheets in the Marketplace (it does have integration for Gmail and Calendar).

Google Chat is rolling out video messages. You can record a short video that then is posted in the 1:1 Chat or Space and can be found on the Media tab. There are some limitations: you can only record video on the web, and ChromeOS, Linux and Firefox are not supported. Anyone, desktop or mobile, can view the video. Captions are not available, but will be in the future. This is for Google Workspace customers only.

Google Chat voice messages started rolling out earlier this year to Google Workspace Individual and Google Workspace subscribers. Now they have automatic transcriptions. The announcement says “Transcription will adhere to your Google Account's language settings”, which I believe means it will try to transcribe in whatever language you have set. I’m not sure how that will work for multilingual Spaces

Google Workspace administrators can now configure Google Meet so that transcripts, recordings or Gemini-powered meeting notes are automatically created for all meetings. Meeting hosts can turn this off in a meeting’s Google Calendar event, or during the meeting.

Google Workspace customers can migrate files directly from Microsoft OneDrive to Google Drive for up to 100 users at a time. This is not available to free personal accounts or Google Workspace Individual subscribers.

Would you use a digital clone in a meeting? Zoom announced an upcoming feature for Zoom Clips that turns a video of a person into a digital avatar. You can add a script for what you want the avatar to say, and the words will be synced to the avatar’s mouth. Why would you use this? Apparently to “chat asynchronously” (although if you have gone to the trouble of writing a script, why not just write what you want to say for people to read?). TechCrunch points out that deepfakes might be an issue. Zoom also announced updates to its AI Companion, which it really wants you to use.

Microsoft shared: Celebrating World Mental Health Day: Tech tips and tricks to support your workday (many using their Copilot AI tools).

More AI Updates and News

Google Gemini will now let you set reminders with Google Tasks, make and refine lists with Google Keep, and engage with playlists in YouTube Music.

Peggy K's Creator News

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