This week's theme is shopping. You may be seeing more creators promoting products on YouTube and Instagram.
Plus OpenAI is killing the Sora app, X was going to limit monetization outside users home region, plus new features for Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and more.
This week's top updates
- YouTube Creator Partnerships matches advertisers and creators
- YouTube Shopping expands to more creators
- Meta adds shopping features to Instagram Reels
- Generate music in Google Vids with Lyria 3
- Edits has new fonts and templates
- Rushes is a new Vimeo replacement
- Twitch improves mobile streaming
- StreamYard has a new look
- Restream adds sharing and analytics features
- Ghost adds members only podcasts
- WordPress dot com allows AI agents
- Beehiiv adds AI integration for audience insights
- Mastodon launches friendlier user profiles
- Reddit labels good bots
- X tried to limit international creators monetizing US politics, then backtracked
- OpenAI kills the Sora video generation app
- Wikipedia bans AI generated articles
- Gemini makes it easier to switch chatbots
- And learn what's bugging me this week.
YouTube and Video
YouTube Creator Partnerships (formerly BrandConnect) now uses Gemini to help connect advertisers and creators. It has the same features as Brand Connect, plus new ways for advertisers to find creators to connect with.
- Gemini will be able to analyze billions of data points – including audience similarity, organic brand mentions, and subscriber growth – to suggest creators tailored to a brand’s specific identity and campaign goals.”
- Advertisers will be able to send queries to multiple creators at once.
- YouTube Creator Partnerships is currently available to creators in the US, India, Indonesia, UK, Brazil, Australia, and Canada. It will be expanding to creators in more countries in 2026.
- Creators can share their Channel Insights with brands. This isn't me, but a reminder that this can (and maybe should) be set if you are interested in Brand deals.
- Advertisers can use creator partnerships boost (formerly known as Partnership ads) to “turn authentic creator content into high-performing ad assets.”
The YouTube Shopping affiliate program is now available to all creators in eligible countries in the YouTube Partner Program with at least 500 subscribers (formerly it required 5,000 subscribers). This lets you tag products from “favorite brands” in Shorts, regular videos on demand, and live streams.
Facebook and Instagram are also
adding Shopping features in posts and Reels
for monetizing creators. Meta added new affiliate partners and easier checkout
to make more viewers able to buy.
Use YouTube Effect Maker (effects.youtube.com
) to turn a selfie into a short video clip using an AI prompt. Once you create
and publish the effect, others can use it in the Shorts editor too.
Watch for details.
You can now
generate music tracks in Google Vids
using the Lyria 3 text-to-music AI model. You can generate 30 second clips or
full songs up to 3 minutes, with limits depending on your account type. This
is available for Google Workspace plans and consumer accounts with an AI Pro
or Ultra subscription.
ByteDance’s new AI video plus audio
generation model, Dreamina Seedance 2.0 is
rolling out in CapCut. It won't be available globally until copyright issues (especially with
Hollywood) are resolved.
The Edits video editing app
added AI font
styling, improved Transform tool for fine tuned changes, more detailed
templates, and easier to find links to Reels, profiles and your own content.
Rushes is a
new platform for independent professional filmmakers
to host, share and review videos. Founder and filmmaker Guy Loftus
wrote:
Live Streaming
Twitch improved its mobile live streaming options. It's easier to view and moderate chat. Use other apps on your phone (like maps, notifications, or messages) while streaming. And if your connection drops, viewers will see a BRB message for 90 sections to allow you to reconnect.StreamYard has a new look and redesigned duck logo, “ to celebrate all the improvements—big and small—that the team has brought to Streamyard in the last year”. Bending Spoons acquired StreamYard in 2024.
- Get clips while you are live
- Detailed Stream Analytics
- Replay and export chat messages
- “Storage” makes it easier to manage uploads and recordings
Blogs and Newsletters
The Ghost newsletter and blogging platform is now integrated with Transistor.fm, showing Members-only podcasts.This sounds like it could backfire: WordPress.com now lets AI agents write and publish posts, and more
The Google Search March Core Update is rolling out, so you may see changes in search ranking.
Beehiiv MCP uses an open standard to allow AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others) to connect to your newsletter to get audience insights or analyze your site. Early access is available to paid accounts.
Social Media
Mastodon has a new profile look, meant especially to be an improvement for institutional users and to make Fediverse discovery more intuitive, including:
- Filter for boosts and replies
- Featured hashtags, and viewers can easily filter an accounts' tagged posts to see all with the same hashtag
- Easier to view all pinned posts
- Updated handle explainer
- Removed Following You badge (since most people didn't find that useful)
- Easier to edit your own profile
Reddit says “Humans welcome (bots must wear name tags)”. They will label "good bots" as [App], and continue to remove spam and “nefarious bot content”. To that end, Reddit is adding human verification for "automated or otherwise fishy behavior", and they are making reporting suspected automation easier. They are also "exploring ways to confirm humanness and comply with [various identity and age confirmation laws] without compromising user identity.” That sounds like the harder task.
On Instagram you can now reorder photos and videos in a carousel after publishing. You can also remove (but not add) items.
X made a new policy for monetizing creators that would give more weight to impressions from people in the same country or region. The reason? X “hopes this will disincentivize gaming the attention of US or Japanese accounts [specifically calling out posts on US politics] and instead, drive diverse conversations on the platform.” This drew backlash from creators who explained they were trying to reach a wide audience and usage of X in their home county is low. X owner Musk then indefinitely paused the change.
Linktree, mostly known for Creator “link in bio” pages, has Social Analytics, giving creators a “unified view of how their activity across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube connects to their Linktree engagement data”. The platform’s updated Insights Chat draws on that days to give customized guidance for social media performance.
More AI Updates
OpenAI is shutting down the Sora video generation app. Its novelty wore off pretty quickly, but even so it apparently is extremely expensive to run. And OpenAI is shifting its focus to business and coding. Disney also withdrew from a billion dollar investment that allowed use of Disney characters and included select Sora videos appearing in the Disney+ app.
Wikipedia’s new policy does not allow AI-generated or rewritten content, but does allow using LLMs to assist basic copyediting and translation with subsequent human review. They note “Caution is required, because LLMs can go beyond what you ask of them and change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.”
In a competitive move, you can now import preferences and chats from other chatbots into Gemini.
What's bugging me this week
A company called Webinar.TV records Zoom meetings without permission then uses AI to turn them into “podcasts” for profit. It's thought that it often gains access to the meetings via 3rd party extensions, like those with calendar permissions. Subs affected meetings also had links shared publicly.
Thanks for reading! 🏵️
Comments
Post a Comment
Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy