Creator Weekly: Instagram Friends Map & Reshares, Google Search AI Overviews, YouTube Shorts

Hello creators! This week there are new Instagram features that could affect your privacy, Google Search says AI Overviews aren’t killing site traffic, plus updates from AdSense, YouTube, StreamYard, Restream, Substack, OpenAI, Gemini and more.

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To Do & Try

The San Francisco Outside Lands music festival is live this weekend on Amazon Music and Twitch.

You can create a Storybook- words with pictures - with Gemini. You can start by uploading photos or your own drawing to get it started. This is also available to Google Workspace accounts. Try it now

College students (18+) in the US, Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Brazil can get Google AI Pro for free for 12 months..

Google Says It’s Not Killing Website Traffic

If you have a website or blog, Google says AI Overviews for Search aren't killing website traffic. Their argument:

People are searching more.
There are “slightly more” "quality clicks" to websites (no numbers though).
People click sites "that help them learn more", so may be clicking different links than they used to.

Google suggests 3rd party reports showing a dramatic decline in clicks are "often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the roll out of AI features in Search". They also state some sites are actually seeing an increase in traffic while others see a decrease.

Why is Google making those arguments? A report from Pew Research found "Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one. For searches that resulted in an AI-generated summary, users very rarely clicked on the sources cited".

And there are plenty of anecdotal reports from news, blogs and other sites that their search traffic is way way down. Barry Schwartz has more on what SEOs are saying on Search Engine Roundtable.

Blocking Sexy Ads on your YouTube Channel or Website

If you are a YouTube Partner or AdSense Publisher, you may need to check your ad blocking settings. These are ad categories you can block from appearing with your content.

Soon Google will stop blocking the “Bare Skin (Image Only)” sensitive ad category on YouTube and the similar “Significant Skin Exposure” category for AdSense Publishers.

There are overlapping categories you can block instead, including the “Reference to Sex”, “Sexual Reproductive Health” and “Dating” in sensitive categories, and “Swimwear” and “Underwear” subcategories under “Apparel” in general categories.

Note this does not affect which ads you see on other people's content.

YouTube Supports Creators Affected by LA Wildfires

The wildfires in Los Angeles County last January were devastating to many in the entertainment industry. Despite stereotypes, most performers and crew aren’t wealthy. YouTube pledged to assist, and this week they announced a $3 million contribution towards supporting creative professionals in LA who are connected to YouTube and had their home damaged. If this affected you, check out the eligibility requirements on the Entertainment Community Fund site (that is a central source for a number of assistance options).

To be eligible for the LA Creator and Performing Arts/Entertainment fund, you need to be one of the following (with documentation)L

A principal owner/operator of a channel in YouTube Partner Program as of December 31, 2024
An individual directly paid by a Creator in the YouTube Partner Program or a Creator’s legal entity for creative services
Influencer marketing and talent agency employees connected to the YouTube ecosystem
Some other creative professionals (see the page for details)

Instagram Live Maps, Friends’ Reels, and Reposts

Instagram is adding new features that can affect your privacy.

Friend Map with precise location sharing (in North America).

Instagram launched a new Friends map. You can opt in to share your real time location with Friends (followers who follow you back), Close Friends, selected Friends, or no one. Your location is updated when you open the app.

You can also choose not to share specific locations like your home or workplace.

However, any public story, post or Reel with a location tag will appear publicly on the map for 24 hours. While those location tags have always been public, it feels like they are more visible on the public map.

This is similar to Snap Maps, which is apparently beloved by younger users. And that is likely why Instagram has added this feature.

Diego Jimenez, Instagram’s head of design, posted “Younger generations get it and love it - they already use social maps. Boomers don't understand it and freak out - they want photos back!" (Nice and dismissive!)

Friends tab in Reels

When you are viewing Instagram Reels, there is a new Friends tab at the top. Tap that to see public content your friends have interacted with (showing whether they liked or commented) and “start a conversation” about them.

It feels a bit weird to have a feed of content liked by Friends and it does make me think more about what I like.

Instagram is also rolling out controls for hiding your own likes and comments, and muting specific people you follow.

Reshare Instagram Content

Unlike most social media sites, Instagram has not had any way to reshare other users’ content to your own followers. There’s a fair number of users who just re-upload Reels and photos without permission (or even credit to the original creator).

So it’s a big deal that Instagram is adding the option to repost posts, carousels and reels. You can add your own text when you repost (quote post?). The reshared content is credited to the original poster, and the original poster may be recommended to the resharer's followers.

When you reshare, a new “Reshared” tab is added to your profile.

Some people argue that quote posting is a bad in general because it can be used to direct harassment towards the original poster (yes, this was coming from Twitter users).

At the least, this gives people no excuse for re-uploading content without the creators’ permission.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

You can now create a sticker from your own images to add to a YouTube Short (watch the demo). In the Shorts editor tap the sticker option, select Image, then select the photo you want to use. You can choose the shape, size, and position of the sticker in the Short.

YouTube is updating their appeal policy. You now have up to one year to appeal channel terminations or content removals, There are also limits to the number of appeals allowed for a single channel termination. This is meant to reduce spam submissions.

YouTube has tips for music artists to gain new listeners, optimize your channel, and create loyal fans.

YouTube shared 5 tips to master Shorts.

In 2022 Twitch launched the Channel Switcher experiment, which let viewers browse through stream previews ad-free. This week they rolled back that experiment “because it wasn’t effective in helping streamers grow their communities.”

StreamYard now lets you set a custom layout for vertical live streams on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram. As noted last week, both TikTok and Instagram require at least 1,000 followers to live stream. YouTube only requires 50 subscribers for mobile livestreams, and there’s no sub minimum for livestreams through Live Control Room.

Restream now automatically creates transcripts of your live streams in 39 different languages, with and without time stamps.

Restream now lets you pause and restart while you are recording.

If you live stream on Substack it is now easier to manage your guests. You’ll be sent a reminder if your guest has not installed the Substack app 3 hours before the event, “Remind” guests of co-host status, and you can manage scheduled livestreams from the Activity Center.

Podcasting

Sherwood News: In the world of podcasts, YouTube is now the elephant in the room — just like in TV

Patreon is improving the listening experience in the Patreon app. There is a visual queue where listeners can easily add, delete and rearrange items. They will even (optionally) automatically fill the queue with episodes it thinks you would be interested in.

Web Publishers and Search

If you are having trouble with Google Analytics, the support community recently relaunched, Ask your question here.

Newsletter and blogging platform Ghost released version 6.0. It includes Activity Pub-based built-in distribution of posts across the Social Web, including Bluesky, Flipboard, Threads, Mastodon, WordPress and other social web platforms. It also has a built-in native analytics suite.

Substack launched title testing to creators with at least 200 subscribers. The title that results in the highest email open rate is the winner. During testing, nearly 60% of the A/B tests had a title other than the original perform the best. After the test is complete Substack automatically selects the best performing title for your post.

You can now customize your Substack profile theme with a cover image and accent colors.

Beehiiv has a new set of tools designed to retain paying subscribers. If someone cancels a subscription they can be shown the option to pause their plan and personalized subscription discounts.

David Buttle @ Press Gazette: Why publishers should worry about growing reliance on Google Discover

Social Media

There are now more Instagram Insights for creator and business accounts.

When people liked your carousel (which slide they were viewing)
When people liked your Reel (which part of the video they were on when they liked)
Demographics of who is viewing specific Reels and Posts
Which content is driving new followers
The “accounts reached” metric is replaced by “Viewers”, which is the number of accounts that have viewed your content. You can also see the percentage of followers and non-followers.

You can find the metrics on your profile in the Instagram mobile app.

OpenVibe now lets you follow RSS feeds, in addition to reading and posting to Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon. Almost all news sites and blogs have a feed, as do YouTube channels, subReddits and more.

Pinterest shared some tips: How To Build Your Audience On Pinterest In 2025

Patreon is improving its post editor that has improved formatting, easier public posting and the ability to set how much text fans can read without hitting a paywall. There’s also new Post metrics so you can see how posts drove growth, impressions, and performance. And there are more options for customizing how locked posts show to potential members.

More AI Updates

Gemini in Google Drive is now better at analyzing large PDF files. This requires a Google Workspace account or a Google One AI Premium, Pro or Ultra subscription.

Gemini in Google Forms can suggest new questions types and text based on existing form content.his requires a Google Workspace account or a Google One AI Premium, Pro or Ultra subscription.

The Gemini-powered “take notes for me” feature in Google Meet will now summarize “suggested next steps” in more languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese and Korean. This is available to eligible Google Workspace Business, Enterprise and Education accounts.

OpenAI launched GPT-5, their “best AI system yet”. It includes a “deeper reasoning model” and a real-time router to switch models. It can code, write “creatively”, and is supposedly less likely to hallucinate than earlier models. Free users have access with usage limits. But many users complain that it has less personality than GPT-4o. And OpenAI abruptly removed access to those earlier models for most users. The OpenAI team did join an AMA to answer user questions. And in response to complaints, Plus users will regain access to the 4o model.

Bing Image Creator now lets you choose between two AI models: DALL-E3 to create multiple images quickly or GPT-4o to generate a single detailed, precise image. Try it at bing.com/create or in the Bing app. Free accounts can create up to 15 daily fast corrections, with 10 Rewards points per creation after that.

Google DeepMind just released the Genie3 world model: “Given a text prompt, Genie 3 can generate dynamic worlds that you can navigate in real time at 24 frames per second, retaining consistency for a few minutes at a resolution of 720p.”

Grok Imagine image generator is now free for everyone in the Grok app.

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