Peggy K's Creator News

Today Google announced a timeline for the shutdown of consumer Google+ and the removal of Google+ features from Blogger . While Google+ itself won't be entirely shut down for consumer users until April 2nd, Google+ features on Blogger will be removed beginning February 4th, less than a week from now. This includes Google+ Comments, badges and widgets and Google+ Profiles. Note that these changes only affect Google+ features. If you are using a Blogger profile and Blogger comments, and you don't have any Google+ badges and widgets in your blog's layout, you probably won't notice any difference.   Watch the video for an overview , or read on for more details. Update 5 February 2019 : All Google+ settings have been removed, and you should see a notification inside your Blogger account: Related Blogger Tutorials: Customize your Blogger Profile Related posts about the Google+ Shutdown: Create a backup of your Google+ Page Turn your Google+ followers in...

If you are using a Brand Account identity for your YouTube Channel or Google+ Page, you can - and should - use Google Takeout to download an archive of your content.  Google+ Page content needs to be downloaded before consumer Google+ shuts down on April 2, 2019 . A Brand Account lets you have a brand, business, organization identity on Google that is different than your personal Google Account identity. Brand Accounts can have multiple Owners and Managers, who sign in to their own Google Account to manage the Brand Account and any Google services on that Brand Account. Currently the only Google products that officially support a Brand Account identity are YouTube, Google+ and Google Photos. Google Takeout lets you create an archive of your content stored by Google. If your data is important to you, it's a good idea to create an archive periodically: Consumer Google+ will shut down by April 2, 2019 and all Google+ Page content will be deleted (NOTE: your Brand Account a...

January is coming to a close, and this week we got a information about what will be happening in the coming months for YouTube, Hangouts in G Suite, Search Console and more. No, there hasn’t been an update from Google+ about the April shutdown for consumer users. There also has not been any update from Blogger about what will be happening to Google+ features. Beginning of the end? Buffer ended Google+ support on January 25th and Hootsuite will end Google+ support on January 28th. Other social media management platforms that offer integration with Google+ will also be affected as t here may be “intermittent failures ” of the Google+ API starting the 28th. While this won’t affect posting to Google+ directly, businesses, organizations, and Pages that use third party tools to access Google+ may stop posting altogether.  New Google+ migration alternative: LifeCloud has a Google+ Data Importer for re-creating Google+ Communities. Todd Hawk is answering questions in the “G+” Com...

YouTube has come under fire for its recommendation algorithms that push users towards more and more extreme content.  Start out watching a news story, let YouTube's autoplay run and just a few videos later you may end up deep in conspiracy theories. Search for health information and YouTube may suggest videos promoting miracle cures and snake oil. If all you care about is total watch time, this probably works great. But it does end up promoting false information and push viewers towards extremism . Today YouTube announced a step towards remedying that. They will be reducing recommendations of videos that almost (but not quite) violate t he Community Guidelines or that could "misinform users in harmful ways".  Examples include videos "promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11." This is in addition to policies against misleading titles, tags, and thumb...

Update August 2019 : Final migration of G Suite customers from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat has been postponed until after June 2020. Update June 2, 2020: Migration of all G Suite customers from Hangouts to Chat has begun. Update October 15, 2020 : Migration of personal accounts from Hangouts to Chat will be in the first half of 2021 . Some Hangouts features ( Google Voice & Google Fi SMS , phone calling , group video calls ) are going away before then. Google has announced that G Suite Users will be moved from classic Hangouts to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet in October. If you have a consumer Google account then this will NOT affect you . The above dates are specific to G Suite customers and their end users who use classic Hangouts. We will continue to  support  consumer use of  classic Hangouts , and expect to transition consumers to free Chat and Meet following the transition of G Suite customers. A more specific timeline will be communicated at a l...

Mark your calendar for Wednesday, January 23 at 5PM Pacific Time ( time zone converter ), when I join my fellow Google Product Expert Michael Daniels to talk about Blogger. Be sure to set a reminder on YouTube ! There will be a live chat during the broadcast so bring your questions and ideas. You can watch the video below, otherwise just click the link to watch and chat on YouTube . Update:  The live broadcast is done. You can  check out my appearance on Michael Daniel’s Tinkering with Tech show  below. I go through some of the basic Blogger settings and answer questions.

As we kick off the long weekend here in the US, there are a number of updates for YouTubers, Plussers, Webmasters and more. The biggest stories: Google Fi gets RCS, YouTube is cracking down on dangerous pranks, Google+-related services are winding down and there's a new platform for news organizations. YouTube will be  cracking down on dangerous pranks and challenges , resulting in Community Guidelines strikes (3 strikes in 90 days and you’re out!). Not only does it include pranks that could cause serious danger or death, but also pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger, or cause children to experience severe emotional distress. YouTube will also strengthening enforcement around custom thumbnails and external links that egregiously violate the Community Guidelines. RIP Annotations: This week  Annotations were removed from YouTube videos . They were replaced by Cards and End Screens in 2017, but existing Annotionations were not removed until now...