Creator Weekly: YouTube Comment Search, Instagram Original Content, Google Search Preferred Sources

Here we are in May already. I hope spring has sprung where you are reading this from!

This week there are a bunch of YouTube updates, plus news for web publishers, Instagram, Firefly and more. 

New this week

• YouTube Creator updates: replace copyright-claimed music with AI generated instrumentals, search your channel’s comments by topic rather than keywords, add multi-language thumbnails, and set channel guidelines.
• YouTube Live on mobile lets you preview effects before you start the stream.
• StreamYard lets you stream to Vimeo natively.
• Instagram’s Edits app added text customization, favorite effects, and the ability to generate video clips with AI.
• Devine may (or may not) be the reincarnation of Vine. It wants real creators, not AI slop.
• YouTube Viewer updates: Ask YouTube conversational search, global availability of picture-in-picture, Home feed thumbnail experiment, build your own multiview in YouTube TV and a Shorts shelf on the Google TV Home screen.
• Google TV lets you remix and voice search your Google Photos, create a dynamic slideshow screensaver, and use Nano Banana and Veo to generate images and video clips.
• Google Photos will also create a digital closet of your clothes (from what you are wearing in photos).
• For web publishers: Preferred Sources for Google Search is available in all languages, learn about AI Overviews and SEO and the WordPress(dot)com “social” theme.
• Instagram now requires original content for photos and carousels to be eligible for recommendations, taking aim at content aggregators.
• LinkedIn lets you purchase ads to promote off-platform events.
• And in AI: Gemini can create formatted files, Adobe Firefly AI Assistant is now in public beta, Adobe image and video editing tools in Claude, Canva’s Magic Layers made a huge mistake, and Google AI Overviews spread misinformation.
• Plus what’s making me smile and frown this week

YouTube and Video 

⇨ For Creators

If your YouTube video has an audio copyright claim, you can use the Replace Song Tool in YouTube Studio desktop to AI generate a royalty free instrumental track (you can pick from four options).

YouTube Studio on desktop now lets you search comments based on “topic or meaning”, letting you find “semantically similar” comments without needing exact search terms. Select a comment, then use the 3 dot menu to select the option to find similar comments or do a search. You can still search as previously, using the “keywords” filter.

Add multi-language thumbnails to your YouTube videos, and viewers will see the thumbnail in their preferred language. In YouTube Studio desktop, open a video details, then click the Languages tab on the left menu. You’ll see the option to Add a thumbnail for each language listed. 

Now all YouTube channels with access to at least intermediate features can set channel guidelines for comments, live chats and (new) communities. Learn more.

You can now preview special effects before you go live in the YouTube mobile app. 

Did you know that you can add a countdown sticker to your YouTube mobile livestream? Learn how.

StreamYard now lets you natively stream to Vimeo. This is available on all StreamYard plans but requires a Vimeo Advanced or Enterprise plan.

New to the Instagram’s free Edits video editing app: 

• Save favorite color adjustments and effects to their own tab
• Customize text outline and line heights
• Generate AI video clips (limited countries, generation limits)
• Features in Beta in the Android app: Versions (multiple versions of an edit)
• Exclusive Euphoria Season 3 filter

Is Vine back? The new Divine app includes 500,000 Vine videos, “restored from a community-created archive”. It claims it will prevent AI slop by requiring C2PA creation details or recording in the app. You can watch a stream of short videos by The app was funded by ex Twitter CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey and built by one of the developers of original Twitter. It’s built on Nostr, an open source protocol. Currently it requires an invite to use.

⇨ For Viewers

Ask YouTube is a conversational search experiment available to Premium subscribers in the US, that lets you take a deep dive. For example, ask to plan a road trip and you will get a mix of videos, Shorts and text with sights and local tips to create your itinerary. You can then ask for coffee shops along the route. Opt in at http://youtube.com/new

YouTube’s picture-in-picture (shrink content into a small draggable window as you browse) is now available globally for all non-music long form content in the mobile app. Premium membership is required to use picture-in-picture for music videos. Learn how to use it.

YouTube is testing “new ways to make the Home feed more immersive” on mobile devices. They are experimenting with automatically adjusting video and thumbnail sizes. For creators, they note “some thumbnails may appear cropped”, but they are not editing the original files. This is just a test to see what increases engagement.

If you have a YouTube TV subscription, you can now build your own live content multiview (not video on demand or DVR content), including sports, news, movies, or whatever else you want to watch. 

New viewing and AI features in Google TV for YouTube and Google Photos include:

• YouTube Shorts “for you” shelf on the Home screen (coming this summer)Google Photos dynamic slideshow screensaver
• Use Gemini to voice search your Google Photos library
• AI Remix your Google Photos
• Generate images and video with Nano Banana and Veo

Web Publishers

Preferred Sources for Google Search Top Stories is now available in all languages. Publishers can add an “Add as a Google Preferred Source” button to their site to make it easy for traders to add it. 

On this week’s Google Search “Off the Record” podcast, guest Nikola Todorovic (director of Software Engineering at Google Search) talks about how Google tests and launches search changes, the role of machine learning and AI over the past decade+, and what website owners (and SEOs) should focus on.
No surprise at the advice: “website owners … need to continue making sure that their products, that their websites, that their platforms are providing value to the user.”

WordPress (dot) com has a new “social” theme that lets you create a blog that has short social-media like posts. They suggest you can use it to import old posts from Twitter, Bluesky or other platforms. 

Tools

Google Translate launched 20 years ago. It now includes pronunciation practice in the Translate Android app, available in English, Hindi and Spanish, in the US and India. And live translate (hear translated speech in headphones) is now available for iOS and Android.

Google Photos will extract the clothes you are wearing in your photos and create a digital closet you can filter, or use to try on or create outfits.

Google Earth now supports the import of shapefiles, in addition to KML and GeoJSON files. You can also upload 3D files in GLB file format.

Social Media

Instagram expanded its Originality Guidelines for Reels to include photos and carousels. To reward original content, the algorithm was updated so that “accounts that primarily re-upload others' work without adding meaningful creative input will no longer be eligible for recommendations across Instagram.”

This will likely affect Instagram aggregator accounts that share Tweet roundups, memes or Pinterest images. Meta says “Creators who want to use content from others should put their own spin on it and add real creative value to stay eligible for recommendations.”

Spotify added a “Verified by Spotify” badge for artist profiles. They use signals both on the platform and off the platform (like concert dates) to confirm an artist is who they say they are. 

LinkedIn’s new Off-Platform Event Ads let you promote events that don’t have a LinkedIn Event page.

There is now a separate X Chat app, letting you chat with anyone on X. It does use encryption, but that may have vulnerabilities.  

More AI Updates

You can now use Gemini to create formatted downloadable files. Create and export from the chat to PDFs, Microsoft Word and Excel, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, LaTeX, RTF and more.

Adobe Firefly AI Assistant is now in public beta. Describe what you want to create and the Assistant generates a workflow across Creative Cloud apps.

Adobe tools are now available inside Claude to edit images or video. For example, “Upload a horizontal clip and ask to reformat it for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or any platform.”

Canva’s AI Magic Layers tool can turn a flat image into a file with layered editable elements. But it has messed up big. It was found to turn the word “Palestine” in images into “Ukraine”, which is a massive mistake. It’s apparently fixed now, but clearly you need to review your designs very carefully if you use that tool. 

Futurism: Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization. Most of the AI Overviews are correct, but even a small percentage of incorrect information over trillions of searches is a lot of bad information that most people will never question for accuracy. 

What’s making me mad

Ars Technica: National Science Board eviscerated; Trump admin fires all 22 members

A project I love

50x50: Science Across America is a YouTube project that is a “road trip” across 50 states, with 50 creators each profiling a science researcher in their home state. The videos will appear on the creator’s own YouTube channel in collaboration with the new 50x50 Science Across America channel. Creators should be selected by now, and their videos will be published this fall.