Creator Weekly: YouTube Podcast Editor, Instagram Features Long-Form Video, Twitch Recaps Spotlight

Happy Halloween! 🎃

This week there’s news from Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Reddit and lots more. The themes this week are content discovery, new formats and AI (always AI). There are so many updates this week, I’m saving some info for next week’s edition.

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Top Updates

Instagram announced long-form horizontal “Features” for TV viewers.
Twitch launched Recaps Spotlight, that shares “standout clips” from Stream Recaps on Instagram and YouTube.
Public Discord posts will soon appear in Search and on Server Web Pages.
Reddit is shifting to a “primarily logged-in experience”, and has added a new “For You” feed.
IFTTT turns to AI, allows free accounts unlimited Applets (with a credits system)
YouTube is promoting microdramas.
The YouTube Studio podcast clipping tool now lets you easily create Shorts.
The free YouTube Create video editing app now supports keyframes.
YouTube Effect Maker is now available in the EU.
YouTube Shopping affiliates can now have a personalized product recommendation shelf.
YouTube is giving some terminated channels a chance to clean up their content.
YouTube is testing lower AdSense payment thresholds.
You can multistream from Substack to YouTube.
Substack is also launching Lists, a curated shareable feed.
The free Edits video editing app has added audio-synced effects, bulk caption editing and new text animations. And the Carousel editor is now available on Android.
Beehiiv podcasts can now be monetized with dynamic ad insertion of sponsor segments or programmatic ads.
Plus more from TikTok, AdSense, Threads, Bluesky, X, Gemini and more.

U.S. Midterm Elections

If you are in the US, the midterm elections are Tuesday. (If you are in a state that offers mail-in voting, like California, submit your ballot as soon as possible.) It’s contentious, and platforms have different measures in place to limit political ads and prevent the spread of misinformation.

Instagram Launches Longform Video

Instagram is going to try to take on YouTube on the big TV screen by launching long form video. It’s called Features, and supports horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. It’s being tested in Brazil, and will soon be available to select U.S. creators.

Instagram says they short form and long form videos to be “symbiotic”. They apparently have noticed some creators and video podcasters make long form videos on other platforms, and use Instagram Reels for promotion. They will also be launching a clip-creation tool called Clips as Reels.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledges they “don’t have a lot of content yet”. But it’s being reported that they are offering select YouTubers up to $500,000 to post longform videos to Instagram in the new format. They apparently can post on the same day their video goes up on YouTube, which makes it a pretty sweet deal.

But beyond that, there apparently isn’t any current plan to offer monetization. Instagram creators mostly earn from brand deals and paid membership.There isn’t an ad revenue sharing option like there is on YouTube.

What’s the creator take?

The success of long form content on YouTube has been supported by the YouTube Partner Program. And YouTube has invested in making the TV app a good viewer experience.

It’s not clear how Instagram Features would benefit long form creators. Why publish to Instagram when it doesn’t offer compensation and currently only has an early-in-development TV app?

YouTube Promotes Microdramas

YouTube is promoting microdramas (short vertical episodic dramas). The format is especially popular in the Asia-Pacific region and is getting more popular everywhere. To help microdrama creators:

YouTube recently launched Shorts series playlists. These are organized into Seasons and Episodes, and have sequential playback and custom thumbnails.
Soon mobile viewers will be able to easily join a channel Membership to keep watching the next episodes without having to leave the content they are watching.

What does this mean? If you have a story that can be split into engaging one minute episodes, now is the time to get creating.

Second Chance for (Some) Terminated YouTube Channels

YouTube is experimenting with cleanup options for channels terminated under the spam policy (and only the spam policy).

Eligible channels are locked for 30 days, and the channel owner will have three options:

Edit or remove specific videos
Delete all videos
Submit an appeal if you believe a mistake was made

The channel is unlocked if the content passes review, all videos are deleted, or the appeal is successful.
If the issues aren’t resolved after 30 days, the channel is terminated.

Twitch Stream Recaps Spotlight

Last week Twitch launched Stream Recaps. Those include up to 25 clips to show the highlights from a stream, and display on the top of follower mobile feeds and on channels..

This week, a bigger picture emerged, with the launch of Recaps Spotlight.

“Twitch’s distribution partners may select standout clips from a streamer’s Stream Recap and share them on their social media accounts on platforms like Instagram and YouTube. Every promoted clip credits the streamer and points viewers back to their Twitch channel”

Twitch notes that this will happen on social accounts of companies Twitch works with “not on Twitch’s main social accounts or your personal accounts”. They didn’t share who actually runs those accounts.

Streaming industry reporter Zach Bussey speculates that they may be clipper agencies. These are part of the so-called Clipping Economy, where people are paid to publish short-form clips of live streams and video podcasts across platforms, including YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok and X (Twitter).

Twitch says that streamers should consistently review and curate Stream Recaps to have more content available to be considered. Other tips for inclusion:

Recaps Spotlight is rolling out to Partners, and it’s opt-in in the Clip Settings.
Eligibility requires at least 2 Stream Recaps within a week (Monday-Sunday).
Viewer engagement with particular Clips is one of the factors used to determine what to promote.
Dual Format streaming is encouraged, since that will include a full-screen vertical version of your stream.

The goal is streamer growth, and Clip promotion may expand to special events and other moments when “communities are creating great content at scale.”

Will this work?

Pointing viewers back to the original Twitch channel only means that the posts include the Twitch channel name. They are unlikely to include a link, as neither YouTube Shorts nor Instagram Reels can include clickable links to third party sites. It’s not clear how many viewers would seek out the original streamer, even if they enjoyed the clip.

And as we’ve seen recently, platforms are pushing for original content. That means that clips posted on “clipper” accounts, which are non-original by design, may not get that many views.

Reddit to Require Login

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) announced that Reddit is shifting to a “primarily logged-in experience”. Here’s why:

The “best version” of Reddit requires personalization, and the core functionality of Reddit like commenting and joining communities requires participation.
This prevents scraping and stealing Reddit’s data.
It makes regulatory compliance easier
This lets Reddit serve relevant ads.

Nothing is changing immediately. Under consideration is how to make sure it’s a good experience for visitors following a shared link or search result. They will start running tests in select markets outside the US in the coming months.

Public Discord Posts Appear in Search

Discord is taking the opposite approach from Reddit and making more content easier to find. Messages from public channels on Discoverable Servers will soon appear in summaries on Server Web Pages and in search results.

Content will not display usernames or avatars.
Users can opt out under User Settings > Data and Privacy
This is off by default for users in the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia and South Korea. It’s also turned off entirely for teens.
Server admins can opt out their server or specific channels in the Web Presence settings.
Private servers, DMs and Group DMs are private and not affected by these changes.

Discoverable Servers are public, have at least 1,000 members, are at least 8 weeks old and meet activity and safety requirements.

All Discoverable Servers will have a Server Web Page, with a description and summaries of discussions in public channels. This lets visitors see a sample of the content before joining.

Changes start going into effect on November 16.

IFTTT is now AI

If This Then That (IFTTT) is now IFTTT.ai (and has a puffy new logo). The last major change for the service was back in 2020, when they introduced a Pro subscription plan and limited free plans to 3 Applets. The new IFTTT.ai is now AI powered (of course), with new pricing based on credits.

There’s no limit to the number of Applets you can have or the services or integrations you can use (including the free plan)
There is a monthly credit allowance that’s used when Applets run
Launched an AI Agent service, although it’s “still a Trigger, an Action, and a clear line between them”
AI Agent has new triggers: New item on a page and Number on a page changes
Write out the action you want in response to a trigger and the AI Agent figures out which of your apps to use
AI Action assist fills in your Applet’s message for you. You can add one Action per Applet.
You can add ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini into your Applets.
Free plans have 1,000 credits per month. Paid plans go up to 100,000 credits per month. There are also other differences, including support options and the polling Applet speed.
Current Pro and Pro+ plan users won’t be charged more, even if current usage is higher than the new plan credit allowance.

How does it work?

Let’s say you want to automatically share your new YouTube videos to a Facebook page.

Trigger: New public video uploaded by you. This costs 25 credits.
Action: Create a link post on your Facebook page. This costs 40 credits.

The total is 65 credits. On the free plan, this could be done 15 times per month. It’s cheaper to send your new videos to Discord. That’s only 25+30 (55) credits.

YouTube and Video

Turn your YouTube podcast videos into Clips and Shorts in YouTube Studio on the web. You can select text in the transcript to manually select a segment, or use AI-powered highlight suggestions in select countries. If you create a Short, you can customize the auto-generated captions, and the Short will automatically link to the full podcast video. More information.

The YouTube Create video editing app now supports keyframes. This lets you smoothly change the position, scale, rotation or opacity of video elements. How to use it. The Create app is currently available for iOS and Android in 21 countries.

YouTube Effect Maker is launching in the EU. This is YouTube’s web platform for creating and publishing Shorts effects. Try it at effects.youtube.com.

Eligible YouTube Shopping affiliate creators can now see suggested products on a personalized product recommendation shelf inside your channel’s shopping hub. Recommendations are based on your past content, niche and audience engagement, so you can easily find top performing items.

YouTube is testing reducing the AdSense payment threshold from $100 to $20 for a randomly selected group of creators in India, Indonesia and the U.S. If you are in this experiment you can choose to increase the payment threshold in your AdSense account.

The YouTube Creator Insider channel has an interview with Chucky Appleby (head of virality for Mr Beast) in a discussion about Dynamic Thumbnails, Video A/B Testing and the YouTube Algorithm.

If you livestream on Substack you can connect your YouTube account and your video will stream automatically to your YouTube channel. You can also start or stop the YouTube stream without ending your Substack stream.

TikTok has a new community-powered restaurant guide called Must Eat. The launch includes areas around New York City, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Edits, the video editing app from Instagram, has added audio-synced effects, bulk caption editing, and new text animations. You can also increase clip volume up to 150%. And you can now access the Carousel editor in the Android app. Plus Halloween effects.

Web Publishing and Search

If you use AdSense for Content to monetize your own website, there is a free webinar on November 5th about how to capitalize on holiday traffic. Register to join.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced their third quarter financial reports, and that triggered their stock’s worst one-day drop ever. That was at least partially triggered by “underperforming” ad revenues from Google Search. An unnamed senior executive blamed that on Search AI Mode, which shows fewer ads. That’s on top of the massive cost of running AI systems. Expect more (or more prominent) ads in the future, but don’t expect more traffic to (non-advertiser) websites.

Substack is launching Lists for its social media platform. These are curated shareable chronological feeds. You can create a list of writers, podcasters, and publishers, and it updates automatically for both the list creator and anyone who saved the list. This is similar to the custom feeds you can create on Bluesky and Threads.

Substack now lets you add a Freewall to your newsletter, requiring readers to subscribe before reading beyond a preview of a post. You can also add a Metered Paywall, allowing free subscribers to access a set number of paid posts each month.

Podcasts

Podcasts hosted by beehiiv are now eligible for dynamic ad insertion. Mark ad breaks, and beehiiv will insert ads from sponsors, programmatic ads, or both. Unlike a pre-recorded baked-in ad segment, this lets you change sponsors, fill unsold slots and easily monetize your back catalog.
This does not change the RSS feed URL, so you don’t need to update anything in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other directories.
This seems more fully fledged than Substack’s dynamic podcast ads that were announced last week.

Social Media

Reddit redesigned navigation so there are now separate For You and Following feeds. The For You feed includes recommendations that Reddit things would be relevant to you, while Following is only posts in communities you have joined.

Threads is testing the ability to customize the like button on your posts. This is currently available in South Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

Threads is getting sound effects built from physical objects, like old keyboards. There’s currently a Halloween sound effect when you refresh your feed on mobile.

Threads Friends has launched in Ireland, Italy and Japan. This lets you share posts privately with up to 50 friends.

Bluesky has a new moderation inbox (in beta). It includes any content or profile reports you’ve submitted, moderation actions taken on your account, your account status, and appeals.

The latest version of Bluesky lets you add a “Trending on Bluesky” widget to your phone’s home screen. It’s available for iOS and Android.

X launched two new features for monetizing creators.There are paid Subscriber-Only Group Chats. And there’s Photo Resharing, which credits the original uploader and lets both accounts earn via Original Content Rewards.

Tools

Generate, preview and edit files in the Gemini app, including PDF, TXT, markdown, and Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. This is mostly web only.

You can also preview, edit and collaborate on markdown files natively in Google Docs.

Use Gemini to edit multiple slides at once in Google Slides. This is available to Google Workspace Standard and Plus accounts and personal accounts with a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

Apple added new mostly AI-powered features to the apps in Creator Studio, including Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro and Pixelmator Pro.

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