Creator Weekly: YouTube Home Tab, Twitch Stream Recaps, Substack Podcast Sponsorships

Hello readers! In this week’s edition the themes are security and discovery.

There are updates for YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Bluesky Substack and a lot more. Also creators are diving into spooky season, with Halloween around the corner.

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Top Updates

• YouTube redesigned the mobile Home tab with custom feeds, and tabs for Subs, Live, Music, Movies & TV and More.
• YouTube will proactively pause activity on potentially hijacked channels.
• YouTube Shopping will soon include AliExpress affiliate products.
• Twitch launched Stream Recaps, a custom collection of stream Clips that replaces Clips in Stories.
• Facebook now lets creators include licensed music in Reels without affecting earnings.
• Google Vids added the ability to adjust video clip playback speed and extract and edit audio tracks
• Use any Instagram Reel “as reference” while you are recording.
• PHP2Shell vulnerability threatened 70% of websites. That would be any that use PHP, including WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Check that your web host has fixed it!
• Image format wars: will websites use JPEG XL images, rather than AVIF? Probably not until JPEG XL is supported by Google Search. 
• Substack will soon launch podcast sponsorships with dynamic ad insertion. 
• Spotify launched Memberships for podcasts.
• Bluesky lets you add prominent, nicely-formatted links to your profile. 
• The Forum Facebook Groups app has new moderator features.
• Meta is making news publishers mad with new terms that allow AI training.
• X Creator Academy launched as a collection of articles about creator tools. 
• Canva Craft is Canva’s new AI image generation model trained on designs, rather than photos.
• Gemini Notebook gives you more control over generated slide decks and Video Overviews.
• Plus updates for Discord, Google Photos, Google Earth, Etsy, and more.

🛡How secure is your site?

This week there was a reminder about the fragility of the internet. There is a serious vulnerability (PHP2Shell) affecting WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other platforms based on PHP.  This includes on the order of 70% of websites. Unpatched sites are vulnerable to takeover by hackers.

I suspect there are going to be more incidents like this. When this was disclosed by cybersecurity firm Wiz, they noted: 

“The underlying flaws had been present for decades, but demonstrating their exploitability required an exceptionally complex chain of steps, at the edge of what human researchers could practically achieve. Frontier AI models substantially reduced that barrier, turning a longstanding flaw into an exploit."

There are relatively few people holding up the entire internet. And AI is making it easier for bad actors to find and exploit vulnerabilities. 

And as a website or blog owner, that means you need to make sure you always have the latest security updates installed, or you use a host that keeps everything immediately updated. 

🎃 Halloween Creativity

Halloween is one week from today, and platforms are ready!

Twitch: Stream-o-Ween is here! 

TikTok: TikTok’s Halloween Travel Guide: Haunting Destinations Inspired by #FilmTok, #BookTok and More

Google: 6 ways to trick-or-treat yourself to the ultimate Halloween with Search. If you connect your YouTube Music account you can create a scary soundtrack. Check out this year’s “Frightgeist”.

🏠 Redesigned YouTube Mobile App Home Tab 

The YouTube Home tab has a new mobile design with quick navigation across the top. Learn more.

Custom feeds: Up to 3 custom feeds  (they sync across devices, mobile and desktop). 

This is available in English, US, age 13+, for channels with search history enabled. 

Topic buttons with custom topic suggestions are gone.

Subscriptions: The Subs feed of your subscriptions, is now on the top bar, rather than at the bottom. 

Standard feed tabs: Also on the top bar are tabs for Live, Music, and More. These previously could be found on the left menu. If you have a Primetime Channel subscription or YouTube TV add-ons, you will also see a Movies & TV tab. 

More tab: Movies & TV, Gaming, Podcasts, Playables, and Memberships. These were also available from the left menu previously.

It’s not clear how this will affect viewer watching. I think there’s potential for people to visit the Live and Subs feeds more than previously, because they are more noticeable options. But it may be that most viewers just continue to browse through the main Home feed recommendations.

🛡YouTube Freezes Hijacked Channels

YouTube is getting proactive about channel hijacking. If unusual or unauthorized activity is detected, channel features are paused, including:

• Uploading or updating videos and Shorts
• Starting a live stream
• Creating or adding videos to playlists
• Uploading custom thumbnails
• Switching videos from private to unlisted or public
• Some recent videos may be set to private

Affected creators should see a notice in YouTube Studio and receive an email. It’s still possible for the creator to still sign in.

Investigation takes 24 hours, and either the restrictions are lifted or YouTube emails the creator with instructions to secure and clean up the account and contact support to lift the restrictions.

🗣Twitch Stream Recaps 

Twitch launched Stream Recaps. This is a highlight reel of up to 25 Clips from a livestream. 

This replaces Clips in Stories. Best I can tell, Stories are still available to share photos and video recorded with your phone’s camera.

Unlike Stories, which are limited to Twitch Partners and Affiliates, Stream Recaps are available to all streamers.

By default, the Recap includes Clips made by you (the streamer) and editors, but Clips can be added, removed and edited. 

Followers will see your Recap on a shelf at the top of your followers’ mobile feed and on channel pages. Watching the Recap will help the viewer maintain their watch streak and let them catch up on what happened.

Viewers can comment and react, and that engagement helps Twitch identify Clips to recommend in the Clips and Live feeds. Learn More.

🎵 Facebook Monetization: “Use licensed music and keep your earnings”

If you are monetizing Reels on Facebook you can now include up to 90 seconds of any licensed music from Facebook’s music library without affecting your earnings. 

Previously, earnings for content containing licensed music could be “different compared to payouts for content that does not use licensed music and performs similarly.” The difference in revenue paid for music licensing.

Facebook says: “We made this change because it’s the very thing people kept bringing up. Music made earnings on Reels feel very complicated, and it shouldn’t.”

Facebook didn’t share the details, but presumably music licensing is paid for before revenue is allocated to monetizing creators.

Facebook Content Monetization is currently invite-only. Earnings are based on content performance, rather than ad revenue sharing.

This may now be more similar to the way YouTube Shorts revenue is calculated. YouTube reduces the ad revenue sharing Creator Pool to pay for music licensing, but doesn’t change the payout for Shorts that use licensed music versus Shorts that don’t use licensed music.

YouTube and Video Creators

YouTube has a new partnership with AliExpress, the Chinese ecommerce marketplace. YouTube Shopping creators will be able to promote AliExpress affiliate products. This initially launched in South Korea, and will expand to the US, Brazil, UK and Germany. Via Social Media Today, which has more context.

YouTube released a Culture & Trends report on Generative AI use in video creation. Most respondents said they did use AI in videos and images (although it seems that the respondents leaned towards “hobbyists”, rather than serious creators). Did you know there is apparently a trend where you make a video showing you hugging your younger self? Maybe I’m just too old for this.

Google Vids video editor has two new features: 

• Extract the audio track from video clips to edit it separately from the video footage.
• Adjust the playback speed of individual video clips (from 0.25x to 2x)

The Edits video editing app from Instagram is now available for the new foldable iPhone Duo.

Meta has shared more details about the soon-to-be-available Edits Plus subscription. It will include 200GB of cloud storage. There isn’t any publicly-shared price yet, and it sounds like this option is rolling out very slowly.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Now you can more easily use an Instagram Reel as inspiration. On the Reel, tap the 3 dot menu icon, and select “use as reference”. This opens the video in a small window on your camera screen, so you can easily rewatch while you practice, and before you record.

Web Publishing

Google Search Central has a new video podcast series, the Non-Canonical Cabinet, with weird and hyperspecific edge cases. The first episode is all about domain names.

With the release of Chrome 155, the JPEG XL image format is now supported by all major browsers. It makes smaller lossless images for the web, and even supports animation. There are overviews from Jake Archibald (written) and ThioJoe (YouTube video) explaining what the deal is. How will it fare versus the AVIF format? That’s not clear. But before you implement it on your site, note that it is not yet supported for Google Search.

The beehiiv newsletter editor now is nicely formatted on phones. Editing on the small screen is never ideal, but this is an improvement over using the desktop version. There are also a number of other small updates at the link.

Podcasts

Substack will soon be launching podcast sponsorships, including dynamic ad insertion and eventually the option fill ad breaks through 3rd-party sponsorship marketplaces. Click the link to sign up for early access. You can also offer ad-free podcast episodes to your paid Substack subscribers. 

Spotify has launched Memberships for podcasts. Creators can offer bonus episodes, members-only content, fewer ads, early access, or access to the show’s archive. Spotify takes a 10% cut of the revenue (same as Substack).

Social Media

Add prominent links to your Bluesky profile! Add a link to your website, newsletter, Patreon, YouTube channel, or whatever you want to highlight. Support links (like Patreon or Buy-Me-a-Coffee) are highlighted green. "Unlike traditional "link in bio" pages, which require visitors to click through a pop-up or another page before visiting your links, Bluesky's profile links send your followers directly where you'd like them to go."

Bluesky has also added iPad support.

Forum, the new Facebook Groups app, has new features for Moderators.

• Admin AI helps mods focus on the most important actions, like member requests and pending posts, and it can highlight things that need attention, and popular discussion topics. It can also draft admin posts. 
• Admin Assist will moderate based on custom rules. 
• Insights with action items, “built around where a group is in its journey, whether it’s brand new, growing, or well established”.
• Easier mod team collaboration with a shared calendar.

Meta updated the terms of service for Business Account users, with wording that would allow them to train their AI models on any associated website. Publishers aren’t happy about that, to put it mildly. After pushback, Meta did revise the terms, and now they won’t go into effect until November 20th. Nilay Patel of the Verge has a recap.

There’s a new Threads feature (possibly iOS only) that lets you select a person or object in an image and reply with just that selected bit.

There’s a new X Creator Academy. It’s a collection of articles about how to use various creator tools, like articles and live streaming, and how to monetize. None of them are new articles, but it’s convenient to find them all in one place.

Discord is celebrating its birthday by adding widely requested features. 

• Pinning DMs on desktop
• Pin your favorite channels to the top of any server’s list (previously only available in Community Servers)
• Click a profile picture to see it in full view.
• Mod updates: Audit Log for non-members, pruning members can be limited to server admins, dupe roles.
• Plus a bunch of smaller updates (see the link). 
• What they are working on: Hide badges, increased Group DM member cap.

Tools

Google Photos now lets you add emoji reactions in shared albums, rather than just a Like. Love ❤, laugh 😂, cry 😢 and more.

There’s a new “customize” hub in the Gemini app, where you can discover Connected Apps and add Skills (like adapting to your writing style).

Gemini Notebook is now a Connected App in the Gemini app. This lets you manage and query notebooks directly. 

Gemini Notebook gives you more control over Slide Decks and Video Overviews. In chat, Notebook will suggest focus topics, formats and visual styles, and you can share specific instructions. You can also enable Review to preview the outline before the final output. Learn more.

Export interactive apps built in the Gemini app directly to Google Sites. No code needs to be copied. You can add more content just like any other Site. However, it doesn’t appear that you can add the app to an existing Site.

Google Meet’s real-time Gemini-powered speech translation now supports 63 languages, works when multiple languages are spoken in the same meeting, supports automatically translated captions, and is available on desktop and mobile. It is available for up to 90 minutes per meeting for eligible Workspace and AI Pro plans, and up to 8 hours for AI Expanded Access and AI Ultra plans.

Google Earth is releasing the image mosaics behind Google Earth Timelapse (1984-2022), allowing you to build your own location timelapses.

Canva Craft is a new design-focused image generation AI model from Canva. It’s available to all Canva users. It has unique qualities: 

• It creates images in two steps. It first designs the composition, layout and typography, and then as a second step, renders the image. This allows more control over individual elements.
• It is mostly trained on human-made Canva templates, rather than photos. This “gives the model a deeper understanding of the principles behind effective design, rather than simply learning what finished images look like.”
• It also generates high-quality photorealistic images that are rated highly compared to other major AI models.

Etsy has new rules to combat AI-powered low quality and fraudulent listings.

• Sellers need to include at least one real photo of the actual item for sale, against a real background.
• Functional guides, things like sewing patterns and recipes, cannot be created with AI. Listings must show a real result made from the instructions.
• Bot-generated listings without human involvement are not allowed.
• Sellers must disclose when AI is used to create an item.
• It’s easier for users to report listings with misleading AI imagery.

Firefox gives five reasons to choose Firefox as your browser.

Thanks for reading! 🌼