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10 Years Ago This Week: Are Windows updates really free?

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing  tech highlights from 2015  that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending July 18, 2015.   Ten years ago Microsoft launched Windows 10 as a free upgrade. But was it really free? The first free Windows system upgrade The Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade site in August 2015 In July 2015 Microsoft Windows 10 launched in 190 countries as a free upgrade from "genuine" Windows 7 and Windows 8 devices. This was announced as a limited time offer, but the free upgrade was actually available through 2023 . Apple had made this shift in 2013, offering free OS upgrades for life starting with OS X Mavericks . What was the advantage of free Windows upgrades?  Microsoft Ecosystem for Developers in July 2015 Older folks (like me) remember when it was a huge hassle to update your computer's system software. You had to go out and purchase the updated software...

Creator Weekly: YouTube Trending Tab Removed, Inauthentic Content Policy Update, Bluesky Profile Notifications

Dear readers, I hope you are having a fabulous summer weekend! This week there are updates from YouTube, Bluesky, Instagram, Mastodon, X, Google’s Veo 3 video model, Gmail, Google Drive and more. 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email. Top news and updates this week YouTube is killing the Trending tab, but still has music, podcast and movie trailer charts. YouTube made a minor monetization policy update for inauthentic content. Yes, you can monetize content made with AI tools. TikTok may or may not be creating a US-only app and there may or may not be a deal for it to be sold to US owners. TikTok Sans font is now available to everyone for free. YouTube channels in the YouTube Partner Program can share channel and audience insights with brands and advertisers. There are now 10-year YouTube Membership loyalty badges. Edits by Instagram now has Voice Enhancement, sharing to other apps, more Insights and an improved Imagine tab. Google’s Veo 3 text-to-video model can now g...

10 Years Ago This Week: Facebook pushes media to pivot to video

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing  tech highlights from 2015  that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending July 11, 2015. Ten years ago this week Facebook launched a Suggested Video feed, sharing ad revenue with video publishers and highlighting professional videos from news media and other sources. Facebook's new video features and encouraging view metrics convinced newsrooms to "pivot to video". In retrospect that was a poor decision.   Facebook Ad Revenue Sharing with Video Creators Re/Code headline July 1, 2015 In July 2015 Facebook launched a mobile Suggested Videos feed, full of professionally produced content and interspersed with ads. Creators whose videos were in the feed near an ad shared the ad revenue with Facebook. Here's how it worked: If someone watched a video in their News Feed in the Facebook mobile app,...

Creator Weekly: YouTube Top Fan Leaderboards, Substack Shareable Clips, AdSense Fills Ad Spaces

  With the US Independence Day holiday, this week’s creator news roundup is a bit more compact than usual. There are updates for video creators, live streamers, bloggers and other web publishers, and social media. 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email..      Top news and updates this week YouTube Analytics lets you compare new, casual and regular viewer behavior. YouTube “Most Relevant” comment filters are available on all channels. YouTube is making a minor change to the YouTube Partner Program policies to better identify spammy mass produced content. YouTube Top Fan live chat Leaderboards are available on all channels. Substack will now automatically generate clips from live streams that are shared to Notes and (optionally) uploaded to YouTube Shorts. StreamYard has a new People tab to manage guests, and improved interface for adding backgrounds, overlays and videos. Restream now lets you record (rather than broadca...

10 Years Ago This Week: Apple Music and Podcasts forever apart?

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing  tech highlights from 2015  that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending July 4, 2015. Ten years ago this week the Apple Music streaming service launched and Apple celebrated 10 years of popular podcasting. A Decade of Popular Podcasts Apple Podcasting Page , June 29, 2005 Podcasts aren't new. Most of the content isn't so different from radio news and talk shows. Digital downloads of episodic content were available for some shows starting in the late 90s (or even before if you dive into the discussions on the Wikipedia article about the history of podcasting). But Apple popularized the format. The popular iPod audio player combined with the popularity of blogging and easy-to-use audio production tools came together to encourage people to create their own shows. The term "podcast" is a combination of iPod and broadcast, underlining Apple's importan...

Creator Weekly: YouTube Advanced Analytics, Creative Commons Signals, Ad Manager Offerwalls

There’s no summer holidays in tech, at least not this week. There are multiple updates for YouTube, plus new features for Twitch, Threads, Facebook, Canva, Google Search, Google Ads Manager, Google Photos, and more. I suspect it has to do with getting features out before June 30th, the end of Q2 and the start of the July 4th holiday week in the US. Read on for this week’s details. 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email. Top news and updates this week YouTube Studio Advanced Analytics improvements Expanded access and more languages for YouTube autodubbing. YouTube Search AI-powered results includes a carousel of clips for travel and shopping content. YouTube Inspiration (AI) tab coming to Europe and Dream Screen AI video generation is coming to the UK. YouTube will soon prohibit under-16s from livestreaming. Twitch Partners can apply to appear on the Front Page. The new Sofiana app turns journalism and academic articles into TikTok scripts. Edits by Instagram (the video e...

10 Years Ago This Week: Reddit in turmoil

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing  tech highlights from 2015  that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending June 27, 2015. Reddit launched in June 2005. Ten years later it was in turmoil, with a crackdown on harassment and the CEO receiving death threats and other abuse.  Big Changes as Reddit Turned 10 In 2015 Reddit celebrated 10 years by listing top posts and comments. Ten years ago, as Reddit celebrated its 10th birthday, Redditors were angry.   Just a few months earlier Reddit's Privacy Policy was updated to explicitly prohibit revenge porn  and there was a crackdown on harassment .  Reddit banned 5 subreddits under the new harassment policy , including one dedicated to mocking fat people that had more than 150,000 members.   If you are reading this and thinking those were good changes, I'm right there with you. But some Redditors conside...