✉ Subscribe to the Creator Weekly newsletter
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday
Top Updates
- YouTube Creator Support in Ask Studio chat
- YouTube Replace Song tool resolves audio claims.
- YouTube Hype with Jewels expands to 13 countries, including the US.
- YouTube Direct Messaging now supports group chats up to 30 people.
- The free YouTube Create video editing app has improved captions.
- Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash in Google Vids lets you generate videos up to 15 seconds long.
- The free Edits video editing app now available on desktop (for the Mac).
- Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Bing announce a shared AI training control for websites.
- Adobe Premiere mobile will soon have licensed popular music.
- It’s easier to live stream from Restream to Instagram.
- beehiiv now supports video uploads to communities.
- Bluesky lets you add your pronouns to your profile.
- LinkedIn is rolling a new analytics Dashboard with new metrics
- Instagram has improved Insights for business and creator accounts.
- The Affinity free photo editing and illustration app is now available for iPad.
- And more updates from Meta, Gemini, and WhatsApp.
Get YouTube Support with Ask Studio
YouTube Creator Support is now in Ask Studio. You can ask questions about monetization or policy issues affecting your channel (and more).
If your channel is eligible, you can ask your issue to be escalated to a live support specialist, which will open a new chat.
Ask Studio launched as a “creative partner” in 2025. It has insights about your channel, so you can ask about video performance or comments. You can also ask Ask Studio to help you design thumbnails or brainstorm ideas.
So the idea is you can do all that, and also get support with technical issues. A one stop shop.
To access Ask Studio, click the Ask Studio sparkle at the top of the window in YouTube Studio on the web. Ask Studio will be available on mobile by the end of the year. Learn more.
The big picture: I’m not a big chatbot fan, but I think this makes sense. It’s easily available where creators are going to be looking at their channel details. The important thing will be accuracy, which remains to be seen.
This is part of a bigger push by Google and other tech companies to put specialized chatbots everywhere. For example Facebook Creator Studio has an assistant for personalized tips and brainstorming.
Edits Launches on Desktop
Edits, the free video editing app from Instagram, is now available for desktop. Currently it’s only available for macOS. Features include:
- Free, but requires an Instagram account.
- Requires a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later).
- Instagram audio library of licensed music and royalty-free tracks.
- Free captions that you can edit and style.
- Multi-track timeline with keyframes and precise editing.
- Color grading.
- Record voiceovers.
- Supports multiple aspect ratios.
- Export up to 4K.
- Share to Instagram or export without a watermark.
The big picture: Edits launched in 2025 as a CapCut competitor, but up until now has been only available for mobile devices. This gives CapCut for desktop some competition.
Shared AI Training Control for Websites
Currently, if you want to block AI training bots from using your website’s content, you need to add each company’s bot blocking code to your site robots.txt file.
Google uses the Google-Extended user agent. Bing bot is controlled by NoArchive and NoCache. OpenAI lets you control the OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot. And, of course, there’s Anthropic, Meta and more. And each needs to be blocked separately.
You can use a service like Cloudflare to block all of them, but that’s not ideal.
So it’s good news that the Internet Engineering Task Force's AI Preferences working group has come up with a shared signal. The big tech companies are part of the working group, and Google, Microsoft, Open AI and Anthropic announced their support.
The new user agent is:
User-Agent: __usage_ai-training
You can still use the company-specific controls. But if you want to block all of them, you will be able to use just this single control instead. This will go into effect in early 2027.
Note that since Microsoft currently uses the NoArchive and NoCache controls, which also affect how a website appears in the Bing Search results, they will stop using those to indicate preferences in AI training or grounding as of March 1.
The big picture: It was high time the big tech companies came together on unified AI controls for publishers, and hopefully it will be widely adopted. There’s no word yet on whether Grok or Meta will abide by this signal. And there is a whole other discussion to be had on whether sites should allow AI Agents to have access.
YouTube and Video
The AI-powered "Replace Song" tool in YouTube Studio (on the web) can help resolve audio Content ID claims. It is now available in most countries (except in the European Economic Area). If you have an audio claim, use the Create option under Suggestions. You can pick from four royalty-free instrumental tracks. Each track is 3 minutes long and can be looped.
YouTube Hype with Jewels has expanded to more countries. Viewers can “hype” a newish video on eligible channels (500-500,000 subs, in the YouTube Partner Program). You can hype 3 videos for free per week, or use Jewels to hype more. When a fan uses Jewels to hype a video, the creator earns Rubies. And Rubies convert to earnings. In addition to Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, this is now available to creators in the US, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey and UK.
YouTube expanded direct messaging to include group chats with up to 30 people. You can update your settings to only allow people you are already accepting messaging with to add you to a Group Chat. Learn more.
The YouTube Create app has new caption styling options, and generates more accurate captions that include sounds like laughing and shouting.
YouTube Creator Insider has a new video for live streamers, talking about community, Memberships, and less intrusive ad formats.
Member perks can include bypassing chat slow mode, no mid-roll ads, and member-only communities. They also teased that mobile live chat @ mentions are coming.
Google introduced Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash, their latest video generation model. Notably it can now generate videos up to 15 seconds long, with enhanced reference following. It’s now available in Google Vids. Free accounts can generate up to three 15-second videos per month.
Google Vids announced the option to create avatars from uploaded images. This would be available to everyone. However, Google halted the rollout the day after the announcement. Google says they will post an update when it resumes. Was it a technical issue or a human issue (like people making deepfakes)? Google didn’t say.
It’s now easier to livestream from Restream to Instagram. You just need to connect once. And Instagram live chat is shown in your studio. Note that livestreaming to Instagram requires at least 1,000 followers.
Adobe Premiere mobile will soon have fully licensed music clips from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. It will allow adding up to 60 seconds of a popular track and includes customizable templates with music. This issue is whether the videos will cause copyright claims or removals. Adobe just says you export and “post to your favorite licensed social platforms,” but it’s not clear platforms are included. Get it for Android or iOS.
Web Publishers and Newsletters
beehiiv now lets you post videos up to 60 minutes long in your community, which you can (optionally) limit to paid members.They will soon be adding video podcasts and native videos for courses or your website. Also new: Community post and podcast scheduling and more.
If your blog or site is hosted through WordPress (dot) com, you can connect ChatGPT or Claude for free through November.
Social Media
Bluesky now lets you add your pronouns to your profile. Just open your profile settings, and select preset options or add your own. Pronouns appear next to your name.
If you are looking for journalism on social media, Bluesky has starter packs assembled for the midterm elections that include major news sources. In particular the regional starter packs have local news sources.
LinkedIn’s new Dashboard tab is now rolling out globally. Check out the link for an overview of the available analytics, including a Post Performance Table, Followers Gained from a Post, Saves and Sends on LinkedIn, and In & Out Network Metrics.
Instagram has improved analytics Insights for businesses and creators.
- Home tab shows a summary of views and followers, and easy navigation to tools.
- Performance tab shows views over time, views by content type, and interactions with your profile.
- Content tab shows data for Reels, Posts and Stories, which you can filter by views, viewers, follows and likes.
- Audience tab shows follower growth over time, follower demographics, and when followers are most active.
Threads now gives "Community Champions" a special shareable card.
Meta has indefinitely postponed a terms of service update for business accounts, after outcry that the new terms could allow scraping the website of any business on Facebook or .
Tools
Affinity, the free photo editing and illustration app acquired by Canva, is now available for iPad. Get the app.
Gemini can now analyze your Form replies. It runs Python code for analysis, so it’s actually grounded in your data. And it provides actionable insights. It’s available for consumer accounts with Google AI Pro and Ultra, and Google Workspace Standard and Plus accounts.
WhatsApp added new features for Events, with an Events Home to manage invites and the ability to send invites to people who aren’t on WhatsApp.
Meta Muse is adding voice chats and expressive avatars. You can also create custom spaces (examples include a holiday gift tracker, daily word game, client hub, trip planner and more).
More
Sad news: Salon is shutting down after 31 years, because their “publishing model is no longer sustainable”.Google, Meta and TikTok Sue to Block California Law Curbing Addictive Social Media for Kids citing first amendment rights.
This is fun to browse: A New Search Engine (Arkivism) Lets You Explore 4 Million Works of Art & Historical Photographs from Museums and Libraries Around the World
Thanks for reading! 🌼
Comments
Post a Comment
Spam and personal attacks are not allowed. Any comment may be removed at my own discretion ~ Peggy