Creator Weekly: LinkedIn AI Slop, YouTube & Instagram in Google Search, StreamElements Acquisition

This week you can see how your YouTube channel and Instagram are performing in Google Search, flag LinkedIn posts and comments as AI slop, collab with other creators on YouTube and LinkedIn, privately tweak your algorithm on Threads and more.

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Top Updates

• Use the new Google Search Console guide to understand performance of your YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X in Search.
• Flag AI Slop posts and comments on LinkedIn.
• Struggling StreamElements was acquired by hardware-maker Razer. 
• YouTube now lets you collab with up to 10 other Creators.
• YouTube Shopping has improved analytics.
• YouTube updated the Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines around Violence and depicting death.
• The Edits app now lets you find music for your video based on a vibe and share videos directly Instagram Stories.
• Medium automatically creates a table of contents for longer posts with headers.
• Beehiiv made it easier to move away from your current podcast host, and to promote your podcast episodes to non-paying listeners.
• LinkedIn collaborative posts have expanded globally.
• Threads now lets you privately update your algorithm.
• Edit images in Google Docs with Gemini.
• Plus updates for Snapseed, Google Photos, Substack and more.

Your Video and Social Media Performance in Search

As announced a few weeks ago, you can now track how well your YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X posts perform in Google Search. Platform Properties have rolled out globally in Google Search Console and there's a really useful official guide to understanding your data.

For Instagram, TikTok, and X, you need to link your Google Account to your profile. 

For YouTube channels, you can select a channel that is already linked to your Google Account that you use to sign in to Search Console. Linkage includes being the Owner or Manager of the channel’s Brand Account, or having Manager access through Channel Permissions.

What can you learn?

• Understand your Search audience. See the search terms people use, the countries your users are coming from, and whether they are on mobile or desktop.
• Spot trending queries that lead to your content.
• Optimize existing content. See sudden spikes in impressions on older content, and monitor what happens if you change the title or description of existing content.
• Compare performance of different formats. For example you can compare longform videos to Shorts, playlists, Reels versus Instagram posts and more. 

LinkedIn Lets You Flag AI Slop

LinkedIn says AI slop is a “top priority”, because “people come to Linkedln to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas and expertise.” 

What is AI Slop? LinkedIn defines it as “content that is potentially sophisticated or polished in its presentation but lacks substance. So it doesn’t have any particular experience, perspective, or insight, but is a sort of just empty text that’s posted to take up space, and garner attention without effort.”

LinkedIn is improving their algorithms to detect automated comments, AI slop and low quality content. 

To support these efforts, they are adding a new option to let users flag posts or comments as “Seems like AI Slop” (which will help the algorithms). 

And they are planning to test privately informing creators on their analytics dashboard “when members feel your post may have come off as inauthentic or heavy use of AI”.

To promote more authentic content, they are expanding Page and Profile identity verification, and will let you block comments from Pages you don't want to see.

But I bet you are wondering about LinkedIn’s built-in AI creation tools. It turns out some of those are being removed or modified.

LinkedIn says they are “removing the ‘enhance your post’ feature you see when you write a post or message, and replacing it with a feature that proofreads your words, but does not change your voice.”

And the AI post writing tool for Pages, which would generate a draft post from your notes, is no longer available.

But, of course, there are lots of AI-powered features. And LinkedIn doesn’t have a problem with AI use, unless the output is slop.

Razer Acquires StreamElements

Gaming and computer hardware company Razer has acquired the assets of StreamElements. 

StreamElements has been struggling. In January they set up a tip jar to “keep it free”, but when that didn’t pay the bills, in May amidst rumors of mass layoffs, they started talking about being acquired.

StreamElements will continue as a stand-alone subsidiary, with core creator tools and integrations continuing as before. To continue earning tips, Creators need to connect a PayPal account to their profile. There is also a new privacy policy.

With the uncertainty around StreamElements finances, many Creators at least talked about changing platforms for overlays and other streaming tools. Maybe this will bring them back.

Will it remain free? I expect the current features will remain free, with future features possibly behind a paywall.

YouTube and Video

YouTube now lets you collab with up to 10 creators (previously the limit was 5). Collaborative videos may be shown to all the collaborators’ audiences. YouTube’s Creator Insider has tips for using Collabs to help grow your channel. Learn more.

There are improved Analytics for YouTube Shopping, with earned revenue data broken down by content, seller, and month. This update is initially rolling out to YouTube Studio mobile, and will be available on desktop later this year.

YouTube has updated the Advertiser-Friendly Guidelines to clarify when depictions of death in the context of educational, documentary or news reporting content can be monetized. If this is the kind of content you publish, spend some time reviewing the policies. 

Edits, Instagram’s video editing app, has new features: 

• Find music for your video based on the vibe.
• Share directly to Instagram Stories (iOS only).
• Apply a filter across all clips. (iOS only)
• Better organized audio editing tools

Edits lets you export your video without a watermark and upload to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, or your favorite platform.

Restream now lets you use their clipping tool on public videos in Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive. This requires a subscription.

Restream now lets you live stream to Slack, so you can broadcast polished webinars and townhalls.

Streamyard now supports Vimeo live chat, so you can view the chat inside your live studio. Streamyard and Vimeo are both owned by Bending Spoons, and it would make sense for them to launch more integrations.

Web Publishers

Medium now automatically creates a clickable table of contents for posts using headers and subheaders. Click an item to jump to that section.

Beehiiv has new Podcasts features: 

• Build automations that trigger when the podcast goes live, for example sending a new email about the episode. 
• Add a free audio teaser clip to paid-member-only podcast episodes.
• It’s easier to move your podcast to beehiiv, with a new import tool that just needs the podcast RSS feed. Listeners using Apple Podcasts, Spotify or other platforms shouldn’t even notice you’ve changed hosts. 

Journalist Scott Carney: The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing. He notes that people have a limited number of subscriptions they will pay for each month, and with Substack’s social features, paid newsletters are competing with free content. He has been more successful getting sponsors for his YouTube videos.

Social Media

LinkedIn Collaborative Posts has expanded globally. Each post can have up to 5 collaborators. The feature is available to regular Profiles and Pages. 

Threads has a new option to customize your algorithm. Originally the only option was to make a public “Dear algo” post. On the Home tab in the Threads mobile app, open the left menu, then under Feeds tab “Your algo”. You can then enter “show me more” and “show me less” topics. This remains private, between you and Threads. 

Publicly chatting with Meta AI on Threads apparently isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. So now you can chat with Meta AI privately in your Threads DMs.

Tools

You can now create or edit images in Google Docs using Gemini. Prompt Gemini to create a diagram or infographic based on your document, refine visuals (change the aspect ratio or image style), and edit multiple images at once. Available for consumer accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription and Google Workspace accounts.

Snapseed, Google’s “pro” image editing app, has a new motion blur tool available in the beta app (currently for iOS, and soon for Android).

Lyria 3.5, Google’s latest music generation model, is now available in Google Flow Music. It has improved lyrics, vocals and musicality.

The Google Forms “Help Me Create” tool can now generate a quiz based on references in Google Drive, Docs and Slides.

Back in January, Google Photos announced “Me Meme”, an AI-powered tool that would turn you into a meme. This has been quietly removed and the original announcement deleted.

Worth Reading

This week Google added a new feature to Google Earth that let you create deepfake images using Nano Banana. You can use it to make fantasy versions of real-life locations. Google also said you can use it to “bring history to life”, but it’s not drawing on expertise to make images that are necessarily true historical representations. It’s all fantasy. 

But there is a dark side. Google Earth has been trusted for satellite imagery, but this new tool lets you create fake politically charged satellite images. You can generate a new satellite image with a nuclear power plant in Iran, refugees at the US-Mexico border or a homeless encampment or drone attack. Google’s initial response was that people could check for the SynthID watermark in the Gemini app or Google Lens, but realistically, images can spread far and wide before anyone bothers to check whether they are real. 

After 24 hours of criticism, Google rolled back the Google Earth feature so that they can “implement stronger guardrails”, but they aren’t cancelling it completely.

Author and science YouTuber Hank Green has apologized and stepped back from creating videos after his admission that he uses AI chat for research and locating resources, and for brainstorming. While that has increased his output, he says “making more things does not make better things.” He wrote, “I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs...with doing more and more and more and more...is not healthy for me or good for the world.” (It’s worth reading the whole thing.)

Thanks for reading 🌼