Creator Weekly: YouTube Community Updates, Instagram Reels Camera, Patreon Podcast Feeds

Dear readers, I’m thankful for you! This Thanksgiving week I want to say how appreciative I am to my subscribers, readers, and live stream viewers. That keeps me going.

This week there are updates for YouTube, Instagram, Patreon, Twitch and lots more. Read on!

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🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Bringing the internet to the billions

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

In 2015 Microsoft, Google and Facebook launched initiatives to get billions of new people on the internet. They each took a different route: Microsoft offered infrastructure development grants, Google designed for the Next Billion Users and expanded internet access, and Facebook opened up their closed Internet org platform a tiny bit. Get the full story.

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New Features for YouTube Communities

YouTube announced several updates to YouTube Communities that are now live:

Available on desktop.
Access community settings and moderate from the community page on desktop.
Pin a post to the top of your community. This is available in the main YouTube app, and will be available on desktop soon. Moderators can also pin a post.
Creators can heart viewer posts in their communities.
Shareable Community links in the main YouTube mobile app. Click the 3 dot menu on your Community page, then Share the link to social channels.

Communities are available to all channels that have access to Posts, as long as the channel is not made for kids. Learn how to enable it for your channel.

You can visit a YouTube Community by opening a channel and clicking the “Visit Community” button.

Updated AI Tools in the YouTube Shorts Editor

YouTube is expanding access to AI tools in the Shorts editor.

Google DeepMind Veo 3 model is available to everyone on mobile. Generated videos can be up to 8 seconds long (previously 6 seconds), and it includes synchronized sound effects, ambient audio and speech.
More countries (they don’t say which) with access to standalone video clips, green screen backgrounds, AI Playground, and photo-to-video. YouTube language settings must be set to English.
You can now create a photo-to-video prompt from scratch, rather than selecting from limited pre-set prompts, and add speech.
Turn sketches into videos with Veo is available globally.
Speech to song and adding lyrics and vocals to Dream Track is available in the US.

New Creator Features on Patreon

Patreon has a bunch of new features for Creators:

Host your public podcast RSS feed on Patreon for free.You can use the feed to distribute to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, and so forth. You can also promote paid episode previews in your feed. They note it does not support dynamic ads.
Paid Members can redeem gift memberships (previously only free or new Members could).
New Plays metrics: Plays on Patreon, Amount Played, Off-Platform Plays
New Per Post Insights and metrics
Live video recordings include a chat replay
Easier to write and customize Posts
Creators outside the US can now use direct-to-bank payouts

Instagram Camera Improvements

Instagram has improved the Reels Camera:

capture up to 20 minutes of video (or edit multiple clips into a 20 minute video)
a new undo button to remove the previous clip
customizable touch ups
improved green screen experience
improved timer and countdown.

Especially notable is the longer videos. Instagram says this “allows for more creative freedom and longer storytelling.”

However, they also note that “Reels over 3 minutes won’t be recommended to new audiences”, so that suggests the longer videos would only be for your existing fans.

Video Creator Updates

YouTube is experimenting with "Your Custom Feed". If you see a "Your Custom Feed" button on the Home tab, you can update the recommendations you see with a simple prompt.

YouTube is expanding access to automated pre-publication checks for Community Guidelines violations. This is similar to checks for copyright issues. If you have access to this feature, and your video is flagged, you’ll have the option to make changes to the video before publishing (or you can publish as-is).

YouTube live chat and channel Memberships will now show handles, rather than channel names. More info.

The YouTube Create video editing app is now available for iOS in Australia, in addition to Canada. It requires an iPhone XR or newer running iOS 17 or later. The app is available for Android in 21 countries.

Instagram is making Reels more accessible in India. Soon Reels can be dubbed and lip-synced by MetaAI into five new Indian languages: Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. There are also new Indian fonts in the Edits video editing app.

Additional updates to the Edits app this week: Stranger Things font, animate mask shapes and properties (e.g. for dynamic reveals, spotlights, custom transitions for your video overlay), and volume ducking (automatically lower the music when speaking).

Matt Navarra reports that if you want to add links to Reels on Facebook or Instagram you need a paid Meta Verified account. Business Plus customers can add 2 links in Reels per month, Business Premium 4 per month and Business Max 6 per month.

TikTok has a new Time and Well-Being space where you can “relax and unwind”. There’s an affirmation journal, ambient sound generator, breathing exercises, and new well-being missions.

Flow, Google’s AI video generation platform has new features: You can generate and edit images with Nano Banana Pro (requires AI subscription), prompt by doodling and annotating, insert and remove objects, and use the Camera Adjustment option to “reshoot” clips from a different camera angle.

Google Drive can now automatically generate captions in 27 languages in addition to English (see the link for the full list). This is available to everyone with free personal Google Accounts and Workspace accounts.

Live Streaming Updates

Twitch Holiday Hoopla is December 1-12. Tag holiday-themed content with the tag HolidayHoopla and it may appear on the Holiday Hoopla Shelf on the Twitch front page. You can unlock holiday-themed emotes by participating in Collab sessions, and you can earn the Ugly Sweater badge by sharing clips. Check out the post for more info on more holiday events.

Twitch is expanding Chat warning messages to mobile. Machine learning systems detect potentially offensive comments, and launch a popup that says “Are you sure you want to send this? Your message may contain words that could be considered offensive or disrespectful. Twitch says that since this launched in 2024 they have seen a 10% improvement in behavior in Chat.

Twitch has expanded its Emote Guidelines to make them clearer. The policy has not changed.

Restream has improved what guests see when joining the Studio, with better layout and cleaner “waiting for Host” and “Host Joining” states.

Restream now supports going live on platforms that support WHIP (WebRTC-HTTP Ingestion Protocol). WebRTC is what many modern video calling platforms use. Advantages are low latency and good audio quality. None of the big streaming platforms (YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok, etc) currently support WHIP, but there are smaller platforms that do.

Restream also now supports custom HLS channels. They say it is a “great option for streaming to Over-the-Top (OTT) apps, embedded video players, multi-bitrate delivery, and enterprise broadcasts that need broad device compatibility.”

StreamYard now delivers higher video quality, including clearer details and text, smoother motion and better color accuracy.

StreamYard has added AI background generation. This requires a paid plan.

Web Publishers and Search

Search Engine Roundtable: Google's Gary Illyes On AI Search: The Change Is Hard To Accept

Substack writers and readers in the UK and Australia will have to verify their age to access certain content (sexually explicit, dangerous, harmful substances, harassment, hate content, violent or graphic content). That means you must have a Substack account to access such content. Paid subscribers are considered already verified by having supplied their credit card.

Social Media

Threads now lets you create a group chat with a link. Anyone you send the invite link to can share it with others. Group chats can include up to 50 people.

Facebook now lets you join a Group using a nickname and alternative profile picture. Admins and moderators can still see your main profile name and photo.

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