Creator Weekly: YouTube languages, Instagram Reels on TV, Twitch Lead Moderators

Dear readers, this is the last of the significant updates for 2025. I’m expecting most platforms to (hopefully) go on holiday until 2026. That means this week there are a ton of smaller updates for YouTube, Instagram and more.

There won’t be a newsletter or live stream on the 27th. Stay tuned for my own recap of the year on January 3rd.

I hope you have a fantastic holiday!

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🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: The questions you ask reveal who you are

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

Google’s “Year in Search” in 2015 started with the statement “The questions you ask reveal who you are”, and went on to highlight trends for social change, helping others and working towards peace.

The 2025 Year in Search has a totally different vibe. It’s about using Google’s AI to ask “conversational” search questions, mostly about pop culture and sports. Changing times? Good business? Get all the details.

🔴 Creator Weekly Live

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✅ Take this week’s quiz

What do you know about new Insights in Google Search Console? Take this week’s quiz.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

Apparently TikTok finally finalized a deal to divest its U.S. operations. ByteDance will retain 20% ownership, and the remainder will be held by a consortium of new investors. The deal should be finalized by January 22, 2026.

YouTube is adding new settings for video language preferences. This is in response to feedback from viewers that they didn’t want YouTube to assume which language they wanted audio to default to. Learn more.

If you create clips from your long-form videos in YouTube Studio, there are now AI-powered Suggested Clips to make it easier. This feature is limited to videos in a Podcast playlist for creators in the US and Canada. Learn more.

You can now use “Edit with AI” to create a short video in the YouTube Shorts editor. Select up to 25 images or video clips and a template, and they will be assembled into a video. You can change the audio, add text and more. This feature is also available in the YouTube Create app.

The YouTube Create video editing app is available for iOS in 19 more countries, the same countries where it’s available for Android devices. Learn more.

YouTube is expanding access to Channel Guidelines, and bringing them to Communities. All channels with access to intermediate and advanced features will be able to create commenting guidelines. Those are shown to viewers the first time they post a comment. You can find the setting in YouTube Studio > Channel Settings > Channel Guidelines. Learn more.

There are now comment summaries in the YouTube Studio mobile app. This can be found at the top of a video’s comment section in the app by clicking the “Get Summary” option. Learn more.

YouTube is testing a new location and functionality for the “Dislike” button on Shorts. They note that people seem to use “Dislike” and “Not Interested” interchangeably. The experimental thumbs down button will be labeled “Dislike” for some and “Not Interested” for others. If you are in the experiment and click the thumbs down option under the 3 dot menu, you will be shown an optional survey (and you are encouraged to fill that out).

YouTube is testing showing image Posts in the Shorts feed. All image Posts created through the "Create" button may be shown in the Shorts feed during this test. A Post can include up to 10 images. YouTube is also "exploring music with this experience."

Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) is coming to YouTube Posts in the US, Canada, New Zealand and India in English. You can use Nano Banana to edit image Posts. This is available in the main YouTube app when you add an image to your Post and click the Edit button. Edited posts will show a “Made with AI” disclosure.

YouTube is testing “Create Mode” in the YouTube mobile app. This “will showcase content creation tools, including experimental AI-generated features to create images, video clips, green screen backgrounds, music tracks and more.” If you are in the experiment you may see Create Mode when you tap the + icon.

A “small group” of YouTube Creators are joining Portraits. Portraits is an AI experiment that lets you have a “conversation” with an AI version of a real person based on their writing and other works. In this new experiment, if you are at least 18 years old, in the US, and watching YouTube on desktop, you “may see the option to “Talk to Creator’s Portrait” on a participating creator’s channel, where viewers can engage with the creator’s Portrait by asking questions and exploring topics related to their content.” The participating Creators have not been listed.

Update for YouTube Partners: Super Chat Goals are now available on vertical livestreams. Learn more.

YouTube is testing a new location and functionality for the “Dislike” button on Shorts. They note that people seem to use “Dislike” and “Not Interested” interchangeably. The experimental thumbs down button will be labeled “Dislike” for some and “Not Interested” for others. If you are in the experiment and click the thumbs down option under the 3 dot menu, you will be shown an optional survey (and you are encouraged to fill that out).

In 2029 the Oscars will be exclusively streamed on YouTube. It’s the first major awards show to leave the television networks entirely. There are questions.

YouTube is pulling its data from the Billboard Music Charts in January. Why? “Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn't reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.”

New podcast stats from YouTube: 1 billion monthly active podcast viewers and over 700 million hours of podcasts viewed on TVs in October.

The Edits video editing app now lets you add effects to specific people or objects in your video. Examples: Use Tag to add a label to an outfit, use Outline or Dither to outline a person for emphasis, use Blur to blur a person or reveal an object, or use Sparkle to add subtle emphasis.

Also new in the Edits app: Add a “stylish” Title, New Years sound effects and fonts, more text and caption preset styles, more fonts for Indian languages, and highlight specific words in captions.

Substack is adding auto-generated thumbnails for live video recordings.

Twitch has added a Lead Moderator role. The Lead moderator can add and remove other mods and update moderation settings. Learn more.

StreamYard has made a major update to its AI Clips tool. You can use text prompts to help it find the clips you want, say “Clip that!” during your stream for the previous 30 seconds to be clipped, full customization controls and enhanced processing (create clips up to 3 minutes long from videos up to 6 hours).

Snapchat launched QuickCut, a video creation tool that “helps Snapchatters turn their favorite Memories into beat-synced, ready-to-share videos in seconds.” You can use Lenses and Sounds to customize the videos, which are shareable on Snapchat.

Google Vids video editor now lets you add more realistic AI-generated avatars powered by Veo 3.1. This is available with Google Workspace Business, Enterprise, Essentials, Nonprofits, and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions.

Adobe Firefly video creation tools have been upgraded:

Firefly Video Editor (beta) is a browser-based video editor that lets you combine generated clips, music tracks and your own visuals. You can edit in the timeline or edit by text (for talking-head clips). Try it.
Prompt to Edit controls let you make precision edits.
The Firefly Video Model lets you upload a reference video to show the camera motion you want to reproduce.
Topaz Astra in Firefly Boards lets you upscale low resolution clips to 1080p or 4K.

Web Publishers and Search

Google lets people customize Top Stories in the Google Search results by adding Preferred Sources. This is now available globally in English. It will be available in all supported languages early next year.

Not new, but important to know if you have your own website: Google's Danny Sullivan & John Mueller On SEO For AI: It's The Same

Beehiiv updated its Automations with new triggers and Workflow Builder.

Social Media

A move that likely will alienate businesses, brands and publishers alike: Facebook is testing a link-posting limit for professional accounts and pages. If you hit the limit, you need to pay for a Meta Verified account. It is still just being tested, so it may not be widely implemented.

Threads is adding more Communities and testing community champion badges for active members.

Instagram has increased the number of hashtags you can include in a caption for a Reel or post to five. They recommend using fewer, more targeted, hashtags to improve your content’s performance.

Instagram has launched a TV app for watching Reels. It may sound odd, but YouTube has found people like watching Shorts on their big screens, so why not Reels too? Reels are grouped into channels that match your interests. It doesn’t sound like there’s a way to focus on Reels from people you follow. It’s currently available for Amazon Fire TV, and has limited functionality as it is being tested.

Bluesky has a new “Find your Friends” feature that does not give the platform access to your contacts. Upload and verify your mobile phone number and Bluesky can match you with contacts who have also opted in. The data is stored as hashed pairs (your number, plus the contact’s number), which would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer. Invites are sent via text message from you, not Bluesky.

Productivity

Google Meet now lets you present audio with stereo sound and share your device’s audio when presenting a window or your entire screen.

Two excellent Google Chat updates: The new Feeds app automatically delivers updates from an RSS feed (blog, news site, YouTube video, podcast, Bluesky profile and so forth). And you can automatically block messages from people who are not in your Contacts.

Create Presentation is a new AI-powered feature in Adobe Express, Acrobat Studio and Acrobat AI Assistant. Generate the presentation from your files and a prompt, and refine and edit your slides in Adobe Express.

Google shared tips on how to create slides with NotebookLM. For example, you can create rough slides in Google Slides, import that as a source, then use NotebookLM to pretty them up. You can also refine existing slides with your brand colors or visuals.

NotebookLM now lets you turn your sources into structured tables that can be exported to Google Sheets.

You can now upload NotebookLM notebooks to Gemini Apps for analysis, in addition to documents, spreadsheets, images and videos.

CC is a new experimental AI agent in Google Labs. You give it access to your Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and the web, and it delivers a “Your Day Ahead” briefing to your email inbox every day.You can reply to emails to customize it or ask it to remember todos. Sign up for the waitlist.

More AI Updates and Tips

The new Mozilla CEO announced AI would be coming to Firefox. After significant pushback, they had to clarify that Firefox will not be an “AI browser”. They will have a full opt-out available “early next year”.

The Gemini app can now verify if a video was created with Google AI. It is able to detect a SynthID watermark in both visual and audio tracks.Videos can be up to 90 seconds long and 100 MB. It unfortunately cannot detect AI-generated videos created with tools that don’t add the SynthID watermark. Gemini can also detect AI-generated images.

You can now use Opal to build interactive “Gems” in the Gemini app.

Google’s Nano Banana now lets you doodle the edits you want to make to a photo or other image.

Gemini 3 Flash is now the default model in the Gemini app, and is starting to roll out to AI Mode in Search. Google says “you can use it to help you see, hear and understand any type of information faster.”

The updated ChatGPT Images model can now generate more realistic images and more readable text, and edit images that “adhere to your intent more reliably”. Images is available from the sidebar in the ChatGPT mobile app and on the web, with preset filters and prompts.

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