Peggy K's Creator News

Creator Weekly: YouTube Studio Insights, Instagram Effect Builder, Twitch Clips

2026-11-14T06:30:00.000-08:00

Hello readers! Days are getting shorter, the weather is getting colder, and it seems tech companies are racing to announce all their updates before the end of the year.

This week YouTube launched a major redesign of Analytics (now Insights) in Studio, there were multiple announcements from TwitchCon and AdobeMAX, and there are updates for Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, Bluesky and more.

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This week’s tip: As I shared a couple of weeks ago, you can now clip long-form Podcasts into Shorts. Watch my video demo.

This week in history: 20 years ago Google acquired YouTube. @webdesignmuseum shows how the site looked back then. So much has changed since then.

Top Updates

YouTube Studio Analytics is now Insights (AI-powered, of course). Plus a new Research tab.
YouTube’s Ask Studio now lets you upload up to 10 images for analysis. It’s also now available in the YouTube Studio mobile app.
Twitch announced new Clips tools, the return of Moments and Hosting, and more at TwitchCon.
X added a native video clipping tool.
Edits video editor added automatic audio balance, plus speed curves, Inspiration feed topics and text animation adjustments.
Restream made it easier to see stream alerts from YouTube, X and Kick.
Google Search November 2026 Core Update is rolling out.
WordPress Reprint is a new official tool to clone your site.
Medium launched the TK writing app, with a built-in assistant and the option to get feedback on your drafts.
Substack has an updated website editor.
beehiiv now has their own email sending engine, for better newsletter delivery.
Instagram launched Effect Builder for Stories.
Facebook is removing additional profiles, an option that launched in 2023.
Threads added advanced search filters and custom likes.
Bluesky has a new Notifications screen and Moderation Inbox.
Reddit Reviews is a new feature that summarizes user discussions about specific products.
Adobe announced new features for Firefly, Photoshop, Premiere, Adobe Creative Agent AI Assistant and more at AdobeMAX. There’s also a new partnership between Adobe and Google with cross platform integrations.
Plus more updates for Gemini, Chrome, Google Ads and more.

YouTube Studio Insights

YouTube Studio desktop got a makeover with updated Insights, Research, and Content tabs. And, of course, there’s integration with Ask Studio AI throughout.

Analytics is now Insights

In YouTube Studio on the web, Analytics is now Insights. It’s a simplified view with personalized performance metrics, showing key metrics “at a glance” with Ask Studio AI-powered summaries for your Content, Audience and Revenue.

This is a massive change, and YouTube says the “old format wasn’t flexible enough to keep evolving” and focus on newer metrics. It also didn’t have as much AI integration.

You can still get detailed metrics in Advanced Mode.

Many creators aren’t fans of the change. The biggest complaint I’ve seen is that information that was front and center in the old design now requires several clicks to access. Engaged views, which give you an idea of how many people are actually watching your videos, are only available in Advanced Mode. And there is a big AI-generated overview that takes up a lot of screen space, and opinions are mixed as to whether that’s actually useful information. If you aren’t a fan, be sure to send feedback to YouTube from inside Studio with specific feedback (not just “I hate it”).

New Research Tab

The Analytics Trends tab is now the Insights Research tab. The idea is that you can see what’s working for YouTube videos in your niche.

Find outlier videos in your niche that are performing unusually well.
See recent uploads in your niche.
Filter by videos or Shorts.
Search for topics, then filter by channel age, video duration, upload date, outlier score, views, subscribers and language.
Dedicated “Analyze Title Patterns” button, that launches Ask Studio

You can still access your saved Trends keywords on mobile, or download them.

This seems like a useful tool. Seeing what works with audiences on YouTube is valuable information, and something that previously required either a lot of research on your own, or a third party tool. You’ll have to use your own judgement on whether YouTube has your niche correct.

Ask Studio Analyzes Images

You can now upload up to 10 images to Ask Studio. YouTube suggests uploading sketches, mood boards, graphics, or stills from a work in progress for brainstorming, comparing thumbnail variants or getting feedback on framing and composition.

Images are private to your chat session and automatically deleted after 30 days.

As a side note, Ask Studio is now also available in the YouTube Studio mobile app. And it has the same features, including the option to upload images. And you can voice type your questions.

TwitchCon Announcements

This week TwitchCon was live in San Diego. Here’s what’s on the Twitch roadmap:

Stream Recaps (launched a few weeks ago): Designate trusted clippers. Their Clips are automatically added to the Recap.
Clips: Maximum length will extend from 60 seconds to 5 minutes, and there will be the option to combine multiple short Clips into a longer Clip.
VOD (Videos on Demand) Highlight Moments: Moments your community was most active, like spikes in Chat, will show on a timeline. Jump to that moment to create a Clip or review community-made Clips.
Moments: This was killed in 2024, but now it’s back. Designate a Clip of “something special” as a Moment, giving it a special label and viewers who saw it a special badge.
Hosting: A new version will let a streamer feature another live channel on their own channel page while they are offline. Both communities will share a single Chat.
Host Trains: Streamers can set a lineup of channels to Host, with a timer that moves viewers to the next stream.
Amazon Luna: Streamers can invite up to 7 viewers to join them playing Amazon Luna GameNight titles.
Co-Stream TV Shows: New ad-supported channels featuring classic TV shows that streamers can co-stream to watch together with their community.
Legendary Emotes: Collectable versions of favorite Twitch emotes. In limited alpha in the US and Germany.
Piñata: Viewers use Bits, Subs and Gift Subs to break open a virtual piñata to earn a special emote.
Moderation: Improved mobile Mod View and Apprentice Moderators (can only give timeouts).
New Unity Guilds: Disability Guild, Indigenous Guild, Asian Guild
Gaming: Grand Theft Auto 6 celebration and more Drops.

YouTube and Video Updates

The Content Page in YouTube Studio on the web has a new streamlined format that shows Shorts, Lives and long form videos on one customizable screen, so you can quickly see how your content is performing. It’s the same as the Content tab in the YouTube Studio mobile app. This seems to still be rolling out, and there will probably be more details when that’s complete.

X added a native video clipping tool to the X mobile app that makes it easy to create a clip and share it in a post. Clips can be up to 60 seconds long. The clip links back to the original video, and both the original uploader and clipper can earn through Original Content Rewards monetization. If you upload videos to X, there isn’t any way to opt out your content.

Edits is adding speed curves, and can now automatically balance your audio, adjust the topics in your Inspiration feed, and adjust text animation.

Restream now makes it easy to see stream alerts in your Chat. You can filter for chats only or alerts only. Alerts include YouTube (Supers, New Membership, Milestones, Gifting, and Gifts with Jewels); X (Likes, Follows, Subscriptions); and Kick (Subscriptions).

Twitch partnered with Creators.gg to bring sponsorship offers to streamers.

Facebook is offering some creators a $5,000 bonus for making video series.

Web Publishing & Search

Chrome has a new Gemini button on the toolbar. This opens Gemini in a side panel, and you can ask it to summarize the content of the site you are visiting.

The Google Search November 2026 Core Update is rolling out.

The Microsoft Bing AI Search Choice extension is a new official extension that lets you turn off AI features in Bing search.

AI labels on Google Ads will soon be shown in California, South Korea and Vietnam. If you use AdSense you may see these ads on your site.

WordPress has made it easier to clone your site. Reprint is a new tool that uses a plugin, plus command line PHP, to copy your entire site. That includes the theme, plugins, uploads, and settings, in addition to the content. Visitors can keep using the original while it’s being copied.

WordPress (dot) com, the hosting platform, has a new migration tool that makes it easier to move from Squarespace, Wix, Base44, Lovable or WordPress on another host.

Medium launched the TK writing app. This is a “private, agentic notebook to craft writing that compounds into deep thinking”. You can call the @TK assistant to help you as you write. It includes a public journal, a place to get feedback on drafts, and the option to create a self-published book.

Substack updated their website editor, with seven customizable themes. They also added collapsable content blocks to posts (you can use it to hide spoilers).

Actual email newsletter news: beehiiv now has their own email sending engine, called Hex. This is meant to make sending faster, and messages more deliverable.

Social media

Instagram launched Effect Builder, which lets you create AI-powered effects for Stories. Once it’s published (and goes through a safety review), anyone can use it. It will show your Instagram handle, making it possible for people to discover you. Try it at edits.com/effectbuilder.

Facebook additional profiles will be removed on December 14. The option to create up to four separate personal profiles for different interests launched in 2023. Some creators use them to keep their personal and professional profiles separate, or create a profile for a pen name, without having to create a Page. If secondary profiles own groups, that ownership must be transferred. And the main profile may have to try to restore friend and follower connections to their primary profile.

Threads added advanced search. You can filter by date range, community, tag, post type and more.

Threads has a fun new feature: Custom likes. If you don’t want the standard heart, you can select an emoji, sticker or GIF to appear when someone likes your post. At the moment it’s a huge engagement hack, with some people racking up likes on their posts by picking a fun GIF that matches their post. But I suspect the novelty will wear off.

Bluesky has a new Notifications screen, that lets you filter by notification type (replies, follows, postsalerts), see only people you follow, and groups similar notifications.

Bluesky’s Moderation Inbox is out of beta. That lets you see the content reports you’ve made, notices about your account and appeals.

Reddit launched Reddit Reviews, a new feature that highlights user discussions of specific products on Reddit and uses AI to generate a summary review. Initially it will cover about 10,000 products in Electronics, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden, and Fashion & Apparel.

Tools

Google released Gemini 4 Hydrogen. This is designed for “rapid execution across diverse agentic workflows”. It is available to everyone in the Gemini app, Google Search, and Google AI Studio.

In Google Search, Gemini 4 Hydrogen can better understand your queries, has advanced reasoning that improves the query fan-out technique, provides visual responses and understands more languages.

The Google Flow AI creative studio has five new creator-built tools: Character Poster (maintain your style across social stories), Character Arc (visualize how a character changes over time), Pixel Machine (bitmap, ASCII, glitch styles), Lucid Glass (effects that mimic unique glass lenses), and Pocket Studio (turn phone footage into polished short videos).

Tabletop is a new Google Labs experiment that is like a collaborative whiteboard with AI for clubs, families, and friends. You use links, files and ideas to generate interactive polls, itineraries and mini apps like expense splitters or tournament brackets. Then invite folks to use it at the same time.

If you are a Workspace Admin, check out Nina Trankova’s Google Meet real-time speech translation deployment guide.

AdobeMAX Updates: AI Tools and Google Collab

This week was AdobeMAX, with lots of updates for Firefly AI and their other apps like Photoshop and Premiere. You can watch the keynote and highlights. This is a quick overview.

Firefly (details)

Firefly Video has expanded video editing features
Firefly Design (beta) is a design space that combines illustration, image editing, editing, 3D and print. It’s designed for promotional campaigns.
Firefly Image: New precision editing features
Firefly AI Assistant, powered by Adobe Creative Agent, has new customizations and deeper integrations.
Firefly Graph (beta): Custom, repeatable workflows.
Firefly Builder (private beta): Transform ideas into interactive prototypes using natural language. Build websites, presentations and apps.

Creative Cloud Tools (details)

New AI-powered features are designed to “offload repetitive or time-consuming work” and Adobe Creative Agent can “take on the busy work”. Some highlights: Photoshop

Relight: Non-destructive lighting adjustment.
Generative Restyle: Prompt to edit, convert the result to a layer, and adjust the intensity.
Remove Tool (related elements): Detects surrounding elements, like reflections and shadows, to seamlessly reconstruct the environment when removing objects.
Quick Compare: Split screen to compare before and after, rather than having to adjust layer visibility.
AI Assisted Editor: Natural language AI-first editing.
The beta app has a number of new features as well (too many to list here).

Premiere

Color Mode: New color grading experience.
Generate Video, Sound Effects, Soundscape and Music
Enhance Audio, Separate Crosstalk, Separate Sound Source: Separate audio sources for independent mixing
Generative Remove (beta): Remove unwanted objects like boom mics
Premiere Mobile now includes licensed music tracks from UMG and WMG for personal, non-commercial videos. It will also soon have the Adobe Creative Agent Ai Assistant.

Lightroom

Glow (cinematic lights), Blemish Removal, Camera Tethering, Open Eyes

Adobe Creative Agent

AI Assistant (beta): Available in Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects and Frame. io
MCP Integrations: Third party agents can call on Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects.

Partnership with Google: Google and Adobe both announced they will be bringing more integrations between each other’s products.

Adobe creative tools available in AI Mode in Google Search.
Google Nano Banana, Omni and Veo available in Firefly, Photoshop, Express and Premiere.
Adobe Acrobat PDF-editor app for Google Docs and Drive.
Google Gemini will be added to the AI models available in Acrobat, and the Adobe Connected app in Gemini will include Acrobat.
Adobe is bringing expertise with creative workflows to Google Deep Mind to explore new editing capabilities in apps like Photoshop.

More

Adobe Express editing is coming to Microsoft Photos
Wonder 4 is a new image enhancement model out of recently acquired Topaz Labs

Creator Weekly: YouTube Ask Studio Support, Edits for Desktop, Shared AI Training Controls

2026-11-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

Hello Readers! This week there are updates for YouTube, Edits, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The Edits video editing app is now available for the Mac. And the big tech companies have a new way to opt your site out of AI training.

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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).

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! 🌼

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

2026-10-31T06:30:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2026-10-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

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! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Bonuses, Facebook Algorithm, Creator Search Profiles

2026-10-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are bonuses for short videos on YouTube and X, custom algorithms on Facebook and Substack, new creator tools on LinkedIn, more prominent links in Google’s AI Search and more.

✉ Subscribe to the Creator Weekly newsletter
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday

Top Updates

YouTube pilots a Shorts bonus program.
Ask YouTube expands to mobile search and more.
Facebook lets you customize “Your Algorithm” (as does Substack)
YouTube Music labels AI-generated tracks.
YouTube Live added floating hearts for vertical streams.
YouTube Shopping adds affiliate campaigns with flat fees.
X pilots a Video Kickstart Bonus program (which is very similar to YouTube’s Shorts bonus program).
Edits lets you add interactive music links and create a style kit.
Google Search updated AI Search to more prominently display links and is testing linking video creator names to Search Profiles.
The new beehiiv plugin for WordPress lets you automatically publish posts to your newsletter.
Meta Accounts are rolling out as a single account for all your Meta apps (including Instagram and Facebook) and devices.
LinkedIn launched a new creator Dashboard with analytics, content management and monetization.
LinkedIn now lets Premium subscribers offer 1:1 Advice Sessions, where they manage the booking.
Plus new features in Bing Webmaster Tools, Blogger, WordPress, Amazon Affiliates, Threads, Bluesky, Google Photos, Photos for Windows, Gemini and more.

YouTube Shorts Bonuses

YouTube has launched a pilot for Shorts bonuses, with the tag line “turn your consistency into monthly cash”.

Based on screenshots shared on social media, if you publish a minimum number of Shorts per month (16 in the example), you get a guaranteed payout, plus extra depending on Shorts performance based on valid engaged Shorts views (organic only). Examples indicate that some bonuses could be as much as $2000 per month.

This is available to invited channels in the YouTube Partner program in the US, UK, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea.

Check “Ideas for You” on your YouTube Studio dashboard to see if your channel was invited. You should also get an email. Learn more.

Why is YouTube testing this? When Shorts first launched in 2021, there was a Shorts fund to reward Creators. Ad revenue sharing for Shorts was introduced in 2023. But that is changing.

In February 2027, there will be stricter YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements. Creators will have to maintain 10 million qualified Shorts Views over the past 90 days to earn from the Shorts revenue sharing pool at all.

My speculation is that this is to encourage current Shorts creators to keep active enough to meet those requirements. Maybe some creators won’t realize they can post that many Shorts until they try. But I would expect this is going to be too much grind for some.

And it matches other steps platforms have been taking to encourage creators to publish more original content. (See also the X video bonuses below).

Ask YouTube Expansion

Ask YouTube, YouTube’s AI-powered conversational search, is coming to more platforms. The answers combine “real-time information from the web, key moments from videos and Shorts, and helpful text summaries”.

In August it started rolling out to smart TVs, and it’s now coming to search in the mobile YouTube app (not Google Search). YouTube is also testing Ask YouTube in the Shorts player on mobile, desktop and TVs.

Is this good or bad for creators? YouTube says this can get your videos in front of viewers who might not have seen them previously. But it’s not clear to me that people will watch if all the information is summarized for them already. Watch your analytics! Ask YouTube is treated like other search results for impressions, views and watchtime.

This is available in the US in English. Click the Ask YouTube sparkle icon to start. Learn more.

Facebook “Your Algorithm” (and Substack)

Social platforms have realized that people want to feel like they have some control over what they see in their feed. To that end, users can now indicate what topics they want to see.

X has basic Custom Timelines by topic, Threads and Bluesky let you create custom feeds with select profiles and topics. Instagram lets you tune your algorithm with your interests. And on YouTube you can create multiple Custom Feeds with AI-powered prompts.

The latest addition is “Your Algorithm” on Facebook. You can tell Facebook, in your own words, what you want to see in Feed and Reels. Facebook says that the AI LLM “under the hood” will let you “tell it what you want more or less of, and your recommendations respond in real time, adapting within the same session to reflect what matters to you right now.”

Click the 3 dot menu icon on Posts in your Feed or on Reels and you should see the Your Algorithm option in your menu. This lets you manage the topics you are (and are not) interested in.

If you indicate you are “Interested” or “Not Interested” in that menu, you can describe in your own words why you want more or less of that content.

Also this week, Substack launched “dials” to let you shape your feed. You can manage the topics you are interested (and not interested) in and indicate how much video, audio and podcasts, chats, and longer posts you want to see.

YouTube and Video

YouTube Music has new labels for AI-generated music, which will also be coming to YouTube proper. The new labels for tracks where AI played “a significant role” are on the player page. The information comes from uploaders, YouTube’s music partners and YouTube’s own AI detection tools.

You can now show your love for vertical live streams on YouTube by double tapping. That adds floating hearts, rather than a thumbs up. You can keep tapping for more hearts, but only the first tap counts as a like. This is only on mobile.

YouTube is adding affiliate campaigns with flat fees and bonuses. Check the YouTube Studio Shopping Hub for creative briefs from brands. These are non-binding, so all you really need to do is make sure your video is the required format (Short or long-form), tag the relevant product in your video, and keep the video public for 30 days.

X launched a pilot Video Kickstart Bonus, where invited creators can “earn $3,000 for posting your own videos”. This is for short (under 3-minute) vertical videos, and requires at least 15 different videos over 15 days, within a 30 day period. Videos shared on other platforms are allowed, as long as there’s no watermark.

If you are using Edits to create Instagram Reels, you can now add interactive links to music in the Instagram music library. Larger accounts (10,000+ followers) can see the topics followers are interested in. There are new effects. And you can create a Kit with your colors, text and caption styles, so you can use them again later.

People are reporting seeing a notice that linking Instagram Reels to other Reels will no longer be available as of October 28, and all existing links will be removed.The linking option launched in August 2025. Instagram has been testing Series, which may be a replacement.

Web Publishers and Newsletters

Google Search is updating AI Mode and AI Overviews to more clearly highlight links and sources.

Inline links will display higher up in responses more frequently.
Testing prominently displaying relevant official websites in a special section at the top of a response.
Prominent carousels for timely news articles, highlighting your Preferred Sources.
“Dive Deeper” section with prominent links to related articles.
Testing clickable creator and publisher names on video results that link directly to Search Profiles. (You’ve set up your creator Search Profile, right?)

Bing Webmaster Tools launched Topics Portfolio, a beta feature in AI Performance reports. It “shows the thematic shape of your site’s presence in AI Search”. The AI Performance report shows your site’s performance in Copilot AI-generated answers, including the queries, while Topics Portfolio is more broad (it could be something like football or taxes or any other broad topic).

If you have a Blogger blog, try the new Google Maps widget. Use this in a post to insert a widget highlighting a location or business, including photos, address and other details.

If you use WordPress(dot)com as your platform, Premium themes are now available on the cheapest Personal plan.

If you have a beehiiv newsletter, and use WordPress to post, then new beehiiv WordPress plugin lets you directly publish posts to your newsletter.

If you are in the Amazon Affiliate program, your Storefront is now “global”. If someone in your audience clicks your link, they will be sent to the Amazon store for their country. If the same product isn’t available, they will show the best local alternative. More details.

Social Media

Meta is rolling out Meta Accounts (originally announced in April). This lets you manage all your Meta apps (Instagram, Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp), MetaAI and Meta devices in one place. One username and password will let you sign in to everything, and you can (and should) set up 2-step verification for security. If you already use Meta Accounts center, it will automatically be migrated to Meta Accounts.

Threads adjusted their algorithm to increase the posts from people you follow.

LinkedIn is adding “new ways to earn”. These aren’t for everyone, as many are experimental or require a paid subscription.

Testing in-stream ads on videos for eligible creators.
Invite-only Creator Marketplace links creators and brands (this launched earlier this year).
Premium Business and Premium All-in-One subscribers can offer “Advice Sessions”. These are 1:1 free or paid consultations. Booking, payment and video calls are managed by LinkedIn.
Premium All-in-One subscribers can set parameters to get daily prospect suggestions. Filters include job title, seniority and industry.

LinkedIn also launched a new creator Dashboard. It has Audience and Content Analytics in one place, and you can see all your content drafts, scheduled posts and past posts in one place to manage your content.

If you have a side hustle or work two jobs, LinkedIn will now indicate that with a “+1” on your profile. Learn more.

On Bluesky you can browse quote posts by “Top” in addition to “Latest”. Click the number of Quotes on a post to see them all.

Bluesky adjusted their search result ranking algorithm to favor recency more. That means searching for current events (for example) will be improved.

Tools

Google Photos for Android updated the Markup tool for editing your images. This includes a “Redact” pen to blur or pixelate sensitive information, updated text styling, a full color picker wheel, and sliders to more precisely adjust the pen thickness. Learn more.

Photos for Windows 11 has been totally redesigned.

The updated Gallery includes photos on your PC, OneDrive and iCloud.
Moments brings images together in a slide show (for images on OneDrive only).
You can filter your photos by People, finding the same faces.
Organize photos into Albums and Favorites.
Use natural language search to find photos.
There is a new faster native Editor with tools to crop, enhance (including Relight), repair (including AI removal of objects) and stylize.
Redesigned native image viewer.

If you don’t pay for a Google AI plan, your default setting in the Gemini model picker is now “Auto”. That chooses “the right model for your prompt”. If you turn this off, your only option is the Flash-Lite model for chats. Learn more.

Got a Microsoft 365 subscription? Your storage is about to shrink. Currently Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscriptions include 1TB of OneDrive storage per family group member. After the update the plans will only include 2TB of shared storage.

Getty Images is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, and will become a privately held company. It’s not clear what this might mean for photographers and other content contributors.

Creator Weekly: Search Profile Expansion, Edits Instagram Carousels, YouTube Shopping Analytics

2026-10-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week has been relatively quiet.

But there is a theme emerging. Platforms are trying to figure out how to highlight human creators and encourage original content, while tamping down the bots and AI slop.

Of course those same platforms really want people to use their generative AI tools and AI agents, so it’s not clear how they will find a balance.

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My tip for the week: Try the new custom caption styles in Google Vids.

Top Updates

Google stand-alone SynthID AI watermark detector.
YouTube improves Shopping analytics.
Google Vids improved “point-in-time” editing timeline.
Restream’s clipping tool now works with YouTube videos and can share directly to Instagram.
X native video editor adds caption editing.
X is running “liveness checks” to weed out bots.
Google Search Profiles for Creators are now available in Canada and India, and soon in Brazil.
Google Search Console performance reports country filters.
Edits now lets you create Instagram carousels, in addition to videos.
Threads is testing “Gems”: special badges to highlight “standout conversations”.
Google Docs now supports Markdown.
Plus updates for LinkedIn, SEO and more.

SynthID Watermark Detector

Google has launched a stand-alone SynthID detector. This can detect SynthID digital watermarks in AI-generated images, video and audio. You need to sign in with Google, Apple or ChatGPT to use it.

Check it out at synthid.com (you can also use the built-in detector in the Gemini app).

Note that this does not detect all watermarks. SynthID watermarks can be detected on output from Google, OpenAI, kakao, NVIDIA, and (soon) Apple.

What about other watermarks? Adobe adds C2PA Content Credentials, which you can verify at verify.contentauthenticity.org. (Google adds both SynthID and Content Credentials on AI-generated content).

What about text? The EU now requires machine-detectable watermarking of all AI-generated content, including text. OpenAI’s ChatGPT will be watermarking generated text in the EU, and Anthropic’s Claude watermarks text globally. Unlike image or audio files, the watermark is embedded in the word choice, and likely is removed by editing.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is upgrading Analytics for Shopping.

Product click and impression data is refreshed daily in under 24 hours.
You’ll see earnings from the exact items you tagged and eligible extra items purchased from the same shopping session.
Take a deep dive, and get content and seller breakdowns in advanced analytics in YouTube Studio on the web. Track metrics like conversion rate, return rate and earnings per click. Data is broken down by individual videos and brand partners.

The Google Vids video editor now more accurately displays the video timeline, showing only the active elements at a point in time. And you no longer have to split scenes to manage multiple timed objects, like captions and media overlays.

Restream added new automated clips features. Clips requires a paid subscription.

Generate clips and Shorts from public YouTube links (in addition to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive).
Publish clips automatically to Instagram.

The X native video editor now lets you edit your captions. You can edit manually or ask Grok to correct them. You can also get translated captions.

Web Publishing

Google Search Profiles for Creators are now available in Canada and India, and soon will be available in Brazil, in addition to the US. Eligible creators need at least 10,000 followers/subscribers on either YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or X.

Google Search Console now lets you filter and compare data in performance reports by country.

The official Google Search Central YouTube channel has new curated playlists for Search Fundamentals and Technical SEO.

SEO expert Lily Ray predicts the next massive Google update is around the corner. “Google is telling us in writing what it plans to go after next: scaled AI content, fake authors, and the GEO tactics built to game AI answers.”

Social Media

You can now use the Edits video editing app to create Instagram Carousels. If you make both Reels and Carousels, this is convenient, and makes it easier to have consistent branding.

Drag and drop images and videos. A carousel can have up to 20 images and/or videos
Place images across slides.
Write multiple captions.
Use cutouts as stickers.
Use the music library. Carousels with music may appear on the Reels tab.

Threads is testing Gems. Gems are automatically selected posts or replies, based on whether it’s a “fresh take”, “sparks real dialog”, and is original. They must be public, comply with Threads policy, and be created on Threads, not cross-posted. Creators will be notified if their post is accepted as a Gem, and will be able to remove the label if desired. This currently only includes posts from people in the US.
(I am skeptical that automated systems will do a good job identifying these posts.)

LinkedIn’s VP of Engineering explained the technology behind the automated systems they use to fight AI slop. Yes, it’s more AI that “learns” from human expertise.

X is now running “liveness checks” on accounts that have automated-looking activity. Options include verifying with your device’s biometrics (like Face or fingerprint unlock), a hand motion check, or selfie video check. Via Social Media Today, which notes that the bot problem is not improving, and the launch of AI bots (including Grok bot accounts) may have made the problem worse.

Tools

Google Docs now supports the Markdown text format (.md or .markdown files). Markdown is used by Large Language Models (LLMs) for structured content like tables or bullet lists.

Creator Weekly: Promoting Original YouTube Shorts, Facebook Forum Groups App, Edits AI Assistant

2026-10-03T06:31:00.000-07:00

Hello Readers! This week YouTube is boosting original Shorts, Edits added a built-in assistant, Facebook Forum has a stand-alone app for Groups, Linktree launched DMs and YouTube tools and Reddit is killing its RSS feeds.

✉ Subscribe to the Creator Weekly newsletter.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts with original content will be prioritized in the Shorts feed.
YouTube Live dual-format streaming has new vertical layouts.
YouTube is updating its advertiser-friendly guidelines to allow some potentially “Hateful” content in the public interest to be monetized.
Use your voice to leave comments on YouTube videos on TV.
Customize caption styles in Google Vids. Plus Vids now has the latest text-to-speech model for voiceovers and avatars.
The Edits video editing app has an AI assistant for making and optimizing your Instagram Reels.
Google Search says “it’s critical” to manually factcheck all AI-generated content on your site.
Reddit is killing its RSS feeds and public API.
Linktree will dynamically display selected content from your YouTube channel. They also launched DMs.
Facebook Forum is a new app for Groups, with AI-powered search, topic labels and new Top Voice role.
Google is replacing Gemini Gems with Skills.
OpenAI announced Dots, their own AI Agent.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is prioritizing Shorts with original content and reducing the reach of channels re-uploading or aggregating content from other creators in the Shorts feed. If you are using clips, be sure to “add real value” with your own voice, storytelling or distinct point of view. This is consistent with YouTube’s existing Spam Policy.

Dual format live streaming in YouTube Studio has new vertical layouts. YouTube Studio will automatically format your vertical stream (choose from 'fit to phone width', ‘center crop’ or 'stacked'), or you can build a custom layout using your encoder. The dual stream has a single unified chat room, and vertical streams may appear in the Shorts feed. Learn More

YouTube is updating the advertiser-friendly content guidelines for “Hateful and Derogatory Content” and “Harmful Acts and Unreliable Content” to clarify that some content “of public interest” can earn ad revenue. This would include things like congressional proceedings or debates over ongoing government actions.

As announced at the Made on YouTube event, you can now use your voice to leave comments on YouTube on TV. If you have a supported TV, you can use your remote to comment with your voice. Learn more.

You can now fully customize the captions in Google Vids. Instead of selecting from a set style, you can change the font, typography, and animation. And you can customize it for individual scenes. Learn more about how to add captions.

Google Vids also has an updated text-to-speech engine for AI voiceovers and avatars, using the Gemini 3.8 Flash Lite TTS model. This is supposed to sound more natural and generate faster.This is available to consumer accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription and Google Workspace accounts.

Edits, Instagram’s free video editing app, has a new AI assistant. If you have it connected to your Instagram account (which is not mandatory), the assistant can give you a personalized overview of “what’s working on your account, and why” and give you ideas for new Reels. This is based on your Instagram metrics, your audience, and your niche and style.This is available in the US, and free to use with a daily prompt limit.

Instagram published its complete 2026 guide to creating Reels.

Web Publishing

Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google Search’s guidance for using generative AI content on your website now says it’s “critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content.” This includes metadata like title, meta description, structured data and alternate texts for images.

beehiiv announced several updates:

Improved recommendation marketplace.
The beehiiv AI Agent now has “Memory” (remembers where your conversation left off) and Subagents for multi-step jobs.
In Communities, you can now @ mention a name.
Updated podcast tools, including IAB v2.2 certification with bot traffic filtered out.

beehiiv also is raising its rates and adjusting its paid plans. The Free plan (formerly Launch plan) is still free for up to 2500 subscribers and includes limited access to most features like Communities and Podcasts.

Social Media

Reddit is killing its RSS feeds and public API because of AI bots, including “large-scale scraping, spam networks, agentic account creation, and automated abuse.” Feeds will shut down November 13, and moderators (and anyone else using the feeds) need to migrate to other workflows before then. Public data API apps and bots are moving to the Developer Platform. Access to Old Reddit will also be limited to accounts that have used it in the last 6 months and mods. More details.

Reddit is also limiting newly created communities to using the new Rules Hub and Automations, rather than automod enforcement for Report, Filter, Remove, Mark As Spam and Approve.

If you are a YouTuber and use Linktree as your "link in bio", you can use Rules to show different content to visitors from YouTube versus social media. It updates automatically to show your latest video, specific playlists, filter between Shorts & long form content, sort by recency or popularity. Rules requires a Premium plan, some other features may require a Pro plan.

Linktree also launched Messaging, so visitors can send a message from your page. Fans who message can be added as a subscriber to “stay in touch” in the Audience Manager. To make sure you don’t miss a message, there’s Spotlight that “surfaces messages that may need attention” and Stacks that consolidates similar messages so they can be responded to in one go. The message in your Inbox shows where the person leaving the message arrived from (like a YouTube video).

This is free to all Linkers.

The Facebook Forum app syncs with your Facebook groups. It’s been in testing since May, and this week Facebook added new features and is rolling it out more broadly.

The Forum Ask chatbot searches Groups posts and comments, can create a recommendations list, and will suggest questions based on your recent searches. The search results include both Groups you belong to and public Groups you haven’t joined (yet?).

Posts may have topic labels, and tapping a topic will show you more posts on the same topic.
There is a new Groups “Top Voice” role for contributors that “consistently create high-quality posts and comments”. This replaces current contributor badges. This is being tested in the Forum app in the US and on Facebook globally.
The app is available in the US for iOS and Android.

Threads is testing a new post media editor on mobile that lets you overlay a Threads post on your photos and videos, add stickers, and split a photo into up to 9 parts.

Tools

Google will be replacing Gemini Gems with Skills, which are reusable instructions.

Unlike Gems, you can “stack” Skills to use more than one in a prompt.
This is rolling out in the Gemini app, and will soon be available in Workspace apps.
You can migrate your Gems into Skills.
Skills in the Gemini app and Workspace apps don’t sync, so you will need to add Skills separately to each platform.
Gems will be retired starting in November for consumer accounts, March 2027 for Workspace accounts.
Skills in Gemini are available to everyone, Skills in Workspace are available to Workspace Business and Enterprise users.
As part of this transition the experimental Opal app building tool will shut down November 17, 2026. Features will be available in Skills and AI Studio, but Opal workflows won't migrate.

OpenAI announced their own AI agent called Dots, powered by GPT-6 Astra. Like Meta Muse or Google Spark it can work in the background taking actions on your behalf. It requires a Pro, Business, Premium or Enterprise plan (if you are using a personal plan, you need to disable use to train new models). Like all agentic tools, what you use them for will depend on how much you trust them.

OpenAI has poached Patreon tech leaders, including Sam Yam (Co-founder, President, and CTO) as the head of Creator Product, along with Drew Rowny (Patreon Head of Product), and Shannon Ma (Patreon Head of Engineering). It remains to be seen if OpenAI is going to start exploring Creator monetization.

Apple Creator Studio has new features:

Pixelmator Pro added template collections, including podcast cover images.
Final Cut Pro and Motion have new ways to add Cinematic mode effects.
Keynote, Pages and Numbers now let you collaborate on your documents and presentations.
In Freeform, Writing Tools with Apple Intelligence can summarize and rewrite handwritten notes.

Reading and Watching

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) explained why he thinks Video A/B testing on YouTube could be a bad thing. What I’m thinking about:

How will YouTube prevent abuse? Engineers plan on building a semantic analysis model that can comb through the entirety of both videos and determine their similarity. Only videos with a high enough score will be able to run as tests. But will it work?
Video A/B testing will find the version with the most retention. But that isn’t necessarily the best video.
Brownlee says: “A lot of what makes YouTube fun is the stuff that is more niched down, that is not mass appeal by definition.”
“Stand by your creative choices. You made this video. This is the video you chose to make. And now you get to share it, and you put it out, and you learn from it. … That’s the creative process.”

Google Arts & Culture turned 15. The new homepage is all about AI (of course), including conversational search and experiments to let you virtually try on historical attire, or pretend to talk to historical artists.

Finally, if you need some beauty and science in your day, check out this article about cteonphores (comb jellies) in Quanta Magazine.

Thanks for reading 🌼

Creator Weekly: Made on YouTube announcements, Adobe Premiere Android app, Multimodal Search Performance

2026-09-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! Autumn is here, with cooler weather, pumpkin pie spice in everything, and the Made on YouTube event, with tons of new features on the horizon.

There’s also a free Adobe Premiere app, and new features in Google Vids, Search Console, Discord, LinkedIn, X and more.

✉ Subscribe to the Creator Weekly newsletter.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

Top Updates

Tons of new features for viewers and creators are coming to YouTube over the coming months. Check out the Made on YouTube recap.
The free Adobe Premiere video editing app is available for Android.
Google Vids now lets even free personal accounts use AI to generate HD video.
Google Search Console now has multimodal Search performance reports. If your site has images it gives you an idea of how they perform in Google Lens search and other image-prompted searches.
Discord has put you in a category. If you were incorrectly identified as a Teen, you’ll have to verify your age.
LinkedIn is expanding verification, including peer verified connections and workplace verification.
LinkedIn launched a new post proofreading tool.
X released a new X Livestream API, so 3rd party platforms will likely implement new features soon.
X expanded “Under the Hood” reports to let you know if a government blocked your post.
Snapchat lets Lens+ subscribers turn messages into songs.
There are new creator tools in Google Flow.
Use Adobe editing tools in Google Gemini.

Made on YouTube

This week was YouTube’s annual “Made on YouTube” event where they announce new features that will be rolling out in the coming weeks, months and into 2027. Watch the announcements.

There are a lot of updates. If the list below isn’t enough for you, check out my detailed recap of the announcements.

AI is everywhere, of course:

Customize your home feed with AI prompts (expanding within the US).
Get a customized audio podcast recommendation guide.
Conversational video editor for Shorts and the YouTube Create mobile app.
Use Ask YouTube for Shopping-related chat.
Ask Studio is launching on mobile, can help you understand your metrics and will help you identify older videos that could use a new thumbnail.
AI-powered comment moderation, based on your moderation style.
AI likeness detection will be adding voice recognition.

Shorts features:

You can now create a Shorts Series (microdramas FTW)
Image posts and carousels will appear in the Shorts feed in most countries.

TV features:

Posts will be available on TVs.
Comments on videos are easier on TVs

Community Building:

Members-only communities.
Group messaging, in addition to the currently available 1-to-1 DMs.
Viewers can super-Hype your videos by spending Jewels

Live Streaming

“Watch with” expansion to live react to long-form videos.
Go Live Together matchmaking.
Live showdown, where two co-streamers battle for the most engagement.
Live auto-dubbing.

Advanced Analysis

Dynamic thumbnails, matches one of 3 thumbnails to different audiences.
Shorts video A/B testing to help you find the best hook.

Monetization

Brand Partnerships updates.
Dynamic Ad Insertion.
Expansion of the Shopping affiliate program and localized shopping links.

Free Adobe Premiere for Android

The free Adobe Premiere app is finally available for Android devices. Premiere is Adobe’s pro video editing app.

Enhance Audio: reduce background noise.
Frame Accurate Editing: Precise control over your clips.
Multi-Track Timeline: Layer video, music, text and effects.
Adobe Stock: Effects, transitions, creative assets, music.
Creator-made templates.
UHD: Edit and export videos up to 4K.
Firefly AI features: Generative Fill, Image-to-Video, Generate Sound
No ads or watermarks.
Requires Android 13 or greater and at least 5GB RAM

Install the app from the Google Play Store. It’s also available for iPhone and iPad (that launched a year ago).

YouTube and Video

A new experiment for YouTube Shopping: YouTube is testing optimized product tag placement. This will be based on how viewers interact with the tagged items. If viewers show interest, it will show on both the video and in the description. If viewers don’t engage, the tags will only show in the video description.

Google Vids now includes AI-generated video clips for both personal and Workspace accounts. Use it to generate new clips, edit existing clips, animate still images or extend clips for smooth transitions. It uses Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, Google’s latest video generation model. Output is up to 10 seconds (you set the duration) in HD (1080p).

On Twitch there are concerns that Stream Together/co-streaming combined view counts can be misused to affect where channels appear while browsing. To address this, Twitch Browse Category pages will use a channel’s individual viewer count when ranking by viewership.Combined viewer accounts appear on channel pages and the left navigation for followers (and this uses the combined viewcount).

X announced a totally new X Livestream API. It can let you go live, schedule broadcasts, moderate chat and get live events for alerts and overlays. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Restream launched new X integrations, likely because they had early access to the new API. Other streaming services are likely to also update their X streaming features.

In Restream you can now position logos, captions and QR codes anywhere on the screen.

Web Publishing

If you have a website or blog with images, the new multimodal Search performance reports in Google Search Console will let you see how your content performs in searches with Google Lens, Circle to Search (Android), image uploads to Google Search and Chrome “Search this image”.

The Google Search September 2026 spam update is rolling out. This may take up to two weeks.

If your website runs on WordPress, be sure to install the WordPress 7.1.2 security release.

Social Media

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has been posting overviews about the Instagram Algorithm. Social Media Today has a nice recap.

Last month Meta settled a massive lawsuit and promised changes that would make Facebook and Instagram less harmful to teens. Facebook called on YouTube and TikTok to implement the same features. Now YouTube says that they already have teen protection measures in place, so they won’t implement Meta’s specific changes.

Starting this week, Discord has placed all users into age groups (Adult, Teen, Unconfirmed). Teens have safety restrictions on their accounts. 90% of users won’t need to confirm their age, with grouping based on things like age of the account, and which servers you belong to. If you need to confirm your age, you can now use a credit card, App store or AgeKey instead of providing an ID or selfie.

LinkedIn is expanding verification, “to help members and businesses build trust”. Verification for individuals on LinkedIn is free.

Verified members can verify connections that they worked or studied with. With enough confirmations, a verification badge will be automatically added.
Company Page admins can remove known imposter accounts.
They are testing workplace verification for current employment at some companies.
Verified on LinkedIn lets users connect their verified LinkedIn Profile to partner platforms like Truecaller, PeerSpot, Adobe, TrustRadius and UserTesting.

LinkedIn is rolling out a new AI proofreading feature. This does not fully rewrite your post, but rather “helps proofread and clarify while keeping your voice”. This is available to Premium subscribers.

LinkedIn is improving its identification of AI slop images, and giving members the option to report AI slop in messages.

X is expanding its “Under the Hood” reports. If you have made at least 10 posts in the prior month, and your account is at least 1 year old, you can see labels on your account and posts that could affect visibility. You can now also see if any post was blocked in a particular country after a legal demand.

If you have a Lens+ subscription on Snapchat there are new AI-powered tools:

Turn Chat messages into songs.
AI Photoshoot cleans up your photos where someone closed their eyes, got caught with an odd face, or the lighting is bad.
AI Remix of Snaps sent by your friends.
Change the style of your stickers.
AI-enhanced fonts for captions.

Tools

Google released 6 new creator-created tools for Google Flow:

Mondo Sónico: Generates custom background ambiance and sound effects
CaptionCast: Automatically generate styled and animated captions.
ThumbnailForge: Create a thumb from a single image, headline and prompt.
Surface: Generate custom textures and map them to 3D walls, floors and ceilings.
CollageMotion Pro: Generate animated collages from text prompts.
SwissFlow Studio: Convert scripts into Swiss-style motion graphics.

Access to Google Flow requires AI Plus, Pro or Ultra or qualifying Workspace plan.

You can now use Adobe editing tools in Google Gemini, including Photoshop, Lightroom, Express and Firefly. You can upload your photos in a Gemini chat and ask Adobe to edit them, turn a single image into social media-ready versions, and customize templates. You can enable Adobe in the Gemini Personal Intelligence settings. Learn more.

Adobe is just one of the tools that you can connect to Gemini. There are new Connect Apps for Productivity (Airtable, Linear, monday.com, PandaDoc, Wispr AI, Zoho), creativity (Adobe, PicsArt, Squarespace, Webflow) and lifestyle (apartments.com, Experian, Peloton, SeatGeek).

If you use Gemini Notebook for research, you can refer to it when using Gemini to generate content in Google Docs. This grounds the output in the Notebook sources, and provinces inline citations. This is available to personal accounts with AI Pro and Ultra, and select Workspace plans.

Adobe also updated the Adobe for Claude plugin, adding Acrobat to tools like Express, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, and InDesign.

Microsoft launched a new version of the Copilot app. You can navigate through Home (your starting point), Office in Copilot, Code, and Autopilot (an assistive agent).

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Made on YouTube 2026: New Features Coming for Shorts, Studio, Livestreaming, Communities, Brand Partnerships

2026-09-25T01:07:11.841-07:00

This week was YouTube’s annual “Made on YouTube” event, with announcements that give a sneak peek into new features YouTube is working on that will start becoming available over the coming months. There’s updates for both creators and viewers.

Here are the top updates:

👀 Customize your home feed with AI prompts.
📺 Shorts Series. Make a microdrama!
🦻Audio podcast recommendation guide.
📰 Posts in the Shorts feed and on TVs.
✂ Conversational video editor for Shorts and YouTube Create.
✨Ask Studio on mobile, with more help with understanding metrics and optimizing your videos.
🖼 Dynamic thumbnails, matching thumbnail to audience.
📊Shorts video A/B testing to help you find the best hook.
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Communities: Easier commenting on TVs, AI-powered comment moderation, members-only communities, group messaging.
💎 Super-charged Hype with jewels.
🔴 “Watch with” expansion to live react to long-form videos.
💑 Go Live Together matchmaking.
🤼 Live showdowns. Two co-streamers battling for the most engagement.
🌍 Live auto-dubbing.
🤝 Easier Brand Partnerships.
💲Dynamic Ad Insertion.
🛍 Ask YouTube Shopping-related chat, expansion of the affiliate program, localized shopping links.
🛡Likeness detection adding voice recognition.

Read on for more details.

Customize Your Home Feed

YouTube has been experimenting with allowing viewers to create multiple custom home feeds that let you curate your viewing experience. These are AI-powered (of course), so you can use natural language to describe the type of videos you want to see including the mood, video length, topics and more. This will now be available for users in the U.S. on the web, mobile and TVs.

When? “Soon”.

Impact? Instead of relying on the YouTube algorithm to surface videos to potentially interested viewers, viewers can craft their own feed. It might be useful to have a sense for what types of content viewers are searching for, but I’m not sure how different that will be from simply keeping an eye on trends. I’m sure someone will be selling “secrets to ranking with custom feeds” any time now.

Shorts Series

Microdramas are short vertical episodic dramas (with cliffhangers at the end of each episode) that first became massively popular in China. Now they are gaining popularity in the US and around the world.

YouTube’s answer to that is Shorts Series. Like Shows, you can create a special playlists of your Shorts organized into seasons and episodes so viewers can easily watch sequentially.

A viewer in the Shorts feed will see a Watch Series button to watch all the episodes in a special feed.

When? Rolling out now on web, mobile and TV now.

Impact? It’s a popular formula for viewers, so if your videos fit the short episodic storytelling format, this is a great update.

Podcast Discovery

YouTube Music and YouTube Premium subscribers will have access to your podcast lineup. This is an AI-generated audio guide in the YouTube Music app that gives a preview of recommended shows and episodes, including why you might like them.

When? YouTube doesn’t say, but I’m guessing soon.

Impact? This has the potential to encourage more podcast listening. Hopefully this will surface smaller podcasts, and not just popular ones.

Posts in More Places

Posts aren’t just limited to desktop.

Viewers are now recommended image Posts from inside the Shorts feed on Android and iPhone.

On the other end, Posts are coming to TVs. Viewers will be able to comment right on the big screen.

When? “In the coming months”

Conversational Video Editing

A new AI tool will help you create a first draft of a Short. You select photos and videos, add a prompt and get a draft. The chat will then offer personalized editing suggestions. You can manually edit the video to create the final version.

When? Early 2027 for Shorts editor and YouTube Create app, for both Android and iPhone.

Ask Studio Upgrades

Ask Studio is your AI-powered creative tool in YouTube Studio. It can give feedback on video drafts, suggest thumbnails. New features include:

Availability on iPhone and Android, in addition to the web.
Help you design new thumbnails for older videos to reach new audiences.
More insights into channel metrics.
Research to find “outlier ideas” based on your audience viewing patterns.

When? Soon.

Dynamic Thumbnails

YouTube is expanding on thumbnail A/B testing, which launched back in 2024.

Different audiences may prefer different thumbnails, so YouTube will soon run dynamic thumbnails that will match the best of three different options to different segments of your audience.

When? “Soon”

Video A/B Testing

You will soon be able to test up to three different Shorts video versions to see which performs best.

When? “Soon”

Impact? Sometimes you don’t know what will work until you test it. Testing thumbnails and titles on long form videos can help you figure out the version that drives the most watch time. Video A/B testing lets you do the same with Shorts, so you can see which hook works best. But it also has the potential for abuse, so it will be interesting to see how creators use it.

Engage with Comments and Communities

Viewers can post comments directly using voice inputs when viewing on TV, without having to use their phone.

YouTube is testing AI-powered comment moderation that holds incoming comments based on your manual comment removal history. This will be opt-in and comments will not be deleted automatically.

When? This will roll out as an experiment on desktop later this year.

Also coming soon:

Members-only communities. When? Available in early 2027.
Group messaging. When? Available in November in the US, UK, Singapore, Brazil, and the EU.
GIFs in comments.

Hype with Jewels

When a fan Hypes a recent video upload, it gets points. High scorers end up on a Hype leaderboard.

Fans will soon be able to “supercharge” their Hype with Jewels. Jewels are paid for, and can also be used to give vertical live streamers Gifts.

When? Currently available in Brazil, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Expansion of Watch With

YouTube has been experimenting with “Watch With” live streams that let you React Live to other creator’s streams.

This is expanding to include reactions to long-form videos.

When? Later this year.

Go Live Together Matchmaking

Mobile live co-streams have been an option for years, but you had to invite someone to join you with a link.

YouTube will be adding live creator matchmaking to select from creators who are currently streaming or jump into a match queue to be automatically paired with another streamer.

When? Early 2027.

Impact? This sounds like it could be a way to expand your audience and have some fun, as long as there are protections in place from trolls and griefers. Unlike Twitch’s Stream Together, it looks like this will be an easy-to-set up mobile feature, which should include more casual streamers.

Live Showdowns

If you have an engaged fan base for your live streams, you will be able to compete with your live stream co-host for the most chats, Super Chats and Gifts.

YouTube says this “creates a fun, competitive dynamic that rallies both communities around a common goal, helping creators grow revenue while giving fans an active way to participate.”

When? In 2027.

Impact? Rallying viewers to give gifts sounds like totally not my thing, but this is probably great for streamers who are already receiving gifts and Super Chats.

Live Auto Dubbing

YouTube’s video auto dubbing in multiple languages is currently only available for Shorts and Videos on Demand (VOD), including live stream archives.

This will be expanding to Live auto dubbing, translating your speech in real time as you live stream. This sounds like it may be similar to Google Meet’s real-time live Speech Translation.

When? The pilot will start in early 2027.

Impact? This could help bring more fans to your live stream community, depending on how good the translation and dubbing are. I can also imagine this turning off multi-lingual viewers, especially if the quality of the dub isn’t that good.

Brand Partnerships in YouTube Studio

YouTube says they want to make YouTube Studio the “ultimate one-stop-shop for brand partnerships.” If you are eligible for Creator Partnerships, there are new features coming:

Ask Studio will be able to help you craft responses to brand briefs, build pitches and get tops for Media Kit optimization. When? Available in some markets now, available globally in 2027.
Share access to performance metrics with Brand Partners using a one-click code.
YouTube is also investing in incentives to agency partners to reward high-impact collaborations. (I’m not sure what this actually means in practical terms.

Dynamic Ad Insertion

YouTube is testing dynamic brand segments. Instead of including a sponsor segment burned directly in a video, this allows creators to both add and remove brand segments in long-form videos.

YouTube is working on new features, including inserting the segments into 20 videos simultaneous, targeting by region, and a shelf with a call-to-action button.

When? Dynamic brand segments are currently only available through an invite-only pilot program.

Impact? This sounds like a great feature for creators with regular brand deals that might be time limited. Get a new deal? Insert the ad. Deal over? Remove the ad.

Shopping Updates

Updates to Ask YouTube will make it easier to shop. If you search for a product, you may be shown a comparison table of features and organized video recommendations. Click a video and you can continue asking questions on the video watch page.

Ask YouTube is also getting better at identifying on-screen products, techniques and even equations.

When? If not now, then soon.

On the creator side, there will be new Shopping features.

Expansion of the Shopping affiliate program to 35 countries. When? By the end of the year.
Tagging Amazon products will expand to India, Brazil and more countries. When? By the end of the year.
Shopping links will be localized for viewers. When? This started as an experiment at the beginning of September.
Affiliate campaigns will allow retailers and brands to offer incentives to feature specific products. When? Soon.

Protecting Your Voice

YouTube’s likeness detection tool helps find content that includes your AI-generated or altered face. This is available in most countries to creators at least 18 years old.

The next step is adding speaking voice detection, “laying the groundwork for broader voice protections over time.”

Likeness detection will also be made available in the YouTube mobile app, in addition to YouTube Studio on the web.

When? Later this year.

Creator Weekly: Expanded Google Search Profiles, Meta One Subscriptions, Cloudflare AI Blocking

2026-09-19T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hello readers!

This week Meta One subscriptions launched, and it looks like creators are expected to pay to succeed. Google Search opened up Search Profiles to more creators and is piloting paying publishers that appear in AI Overviews and Gemini.

There are also updates for live streamers, podcasters, website owners and more.

Top Updates

More YouTube, Instagram, X and TikTok creators are eligible for Google Search Profiles.
Meta One Subscriptions launched for creators and businesses, with Instagram and Facebook features including links on Reels and posts, advance post scheduling, more analytics Insights and more.
Threads added a bunch of new podcast features for podcaster profiles and posts.
Twitch no longer lets you only show Featured clips.
Cloudflare lets you block AI training bots while still allowing crawling by the Googlebot, Applebot and Bingbot.
Google is testing compensating publishers when they contribute to AI Mode and AI Overviews.
beehiiv added new Community features, including Community Managers, custom profiles and member list and a mobile-first experience.
Meta Creator Marketing Hub has improved filters and search, more granular permissions and messaging.

More Creators Eligible for Google Search Profile

Google Search Profiles let creators and publishers customize how they appear in the Google Search results. A profile can include a short bio, website and social media links, articles and other content.

Just a month ago, in August, the eligibility requirements dropped from 100,000 YouTube subscribers to 35,000, with a similar change for Instagram, X and TikTok profiles.

This week Google opened Search Profiles to even more creators, with the new requirement only 10,000 subscribers or followers on any of those platforms for US creators. (I’m almost eligible!)

There are also new features aimed at publishers:

Manage multiple Search profiles from one account.
Improved article display, with longer headlines and optimized thumbnails.

If you (or your brand) are eligible, there’s no reason not to claim your profile!

Meta One Subscriptions Launch: Would You Pay To Share Links?

Meta has launched paid Meta One subscriptions for Creators.

For Creators, the message is “create more, manage less”. Maybe that’s true. But it also very much looks like Creators will have to pay to stand out on Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says “the core experience in our apps stays free. Subscriptions let us build things we otherwise couldn't, like features that are too specialized or too costly to bring to everyone, and get them to the people who want them most.”

Creator features for both platforms:

A limited number of links in Reels and Instagram Posts
Original Content Credit.
Get a Verified badge, proactive impersonation protection, and human support.
Link page for your profile.

Additional paid features for Instagram include:

Schedule Posts and Reels months in advance and batch schedule multiple Posts or Reels.
Compare performance of your account to similar profiles.
Analytics Insights beyond 90 days and export Insights to a spreadsheet.
Shared Instagram access for managers, using their own account.
Additional Instagram Plus features. (Pin more posts to profile, Story features, custom bio and message fonts, post content only to your profile)

Additional paid features for Facebook include:

Automatically invite people who engage with your content to follow you.
Content featured in the Feed. “Get a chance to be surfaced to people likely to be interested in your content.”
Schedule posts in advance with “Smart Schedule” so they go out when your audience is active.
Analytics insights about your audience, particularly those who aren’t following you.
More AI features in the Creator Assistant app (currently rolling out in the US, Canada and India).
Additional Facebook Plus features for Stories (Super Reactions, Search your story viewer list, extended expiration, Story rewatch highlights)

An Edits Plus subscription is also “Coming Soon” for the Edits video editing app. That includes more cloud storage and more AI usage.

So how much does it cost?

If you want to regularly post links, that’s at least $50 per month. These prices are per profile, so if you have a Facebook profile and an Instagram profile, you need to pay for each separately.

Essential: $14.99 per month. Includes Instagram Link Page, Verified Badge and Impersonation Protection, and Instagram Plus, Facebook Plus, and WhatsApp Plus.
Advanced: $49.99 per month. Includes Links in Reels (8 per month), chance to be featured in the Facebook Feed, optimized scheduling, human support and other features.
Expert: $149 per month and Max: $499 per month. More links, access AI features and human phone support.

There are similar plans for Businesses that also include business-oriented WhatsApp and advertising features. And unlike the Creator plans where you just have to pay for links in Instagram posts, Business plans it looks like Meta also make businesses pay for additional links in Facebook posts.

This seems really spendy unless you are monetizing and earning at least as much as the subscription costs. But up-and-coming creators may feel like they have no choice but to pay. And if you need human support, there isn’t any other option.

Threads Highlights Podcasts

Threads has added a bunch of new features for podcasters and listeners.

You can display a profile or post banner linking to your podcast.
Podcast links appear as a tappable card.
You can select a specific episode to feature.
There are animated transcripts in posts.
Highlight video clips.
Opt in to get a notification reminding you to share new episodes.
Stats and Insights where you can see your podcast reach, engagement, clicks and saves.
Listeners can save episodes from posts in their feed.

If you are a podcaster, open your Threads profile and click the “Edit Profile” button, then select “Podcast” to link your podcast. It supports podcast links on Spotify, Apple, or iHeart.

There is no verification that you are the podcast owner, so you can use this option to highlight any podcast on the supported platforms.

Why it’s interesting

Meta mostly discourages people from posting links to other sites on its platforms. While there’s no limit to shared links on Threads, common wisdom is that a link can decrease the reach of your post.

So this is surprising that Meta is going all in on highlighting podcasts that are hosted on 3rd party sites.

If you are a podcaster, this is another way to reach your potential audience, especially as its popularity seems to have nearly caught up with X.

YouTube and Video

YouTube’s Creator Insider interviews Kyle, YouTube’s global lead for content strategy, about what you should do if you want to pivot the content on your channel.

Twitch removed the Featured Clips feature that let you limit visible clips on your channel (and for discovery) exclusively to Featured Clips. Zach Bussey has more details.

VidCon launched in 2010 as the premiere conference for video creators, industry pros and fans. It has now been acquired by LIONS, which also runs the prestigious Cannes LIONS marketing event. This is moving VidCon from Anaheim, California to Denver, then Nashville, as part of a new Insight to Impact event. It shifts the focus to marketing.

Web Publishing

Digiday reports that Google has launched an AI contribution pilot. This lets publishers earn money when their “content contributes significantly to the creation of AI-generated responses” in the Gemini app, AI Search Overviews and AI Mode. The payments are apparently based on “value”, not just usage. This was announced (in a vague way) in June. Search Engine Journal has more context.

Cloudflare has a new "Disallow AI Training" setting that allows "accountable" mixed-use crawlers from Google, Apple and Microsoft index your site for search, but blocks AI training. Originally, blocking “Training” (which was to go into effect September 15th) would block mixed-use bots entirely. Now you can use the “Block” setting to block all bots for AI training (including mixed-use bots), and “Disallow AI Training” to add the appropriate robots.txt file to block “accountable” crawlers and otherwise block all training bots.

Tumblr Premium subscriptions include new features: bookmark posts and sort them into Collections, Premium gifting, animated avatars. Tumblr is owned by Automattic (parent company of WordPress(dot)com), which has been slowly adding new features to the platform.

beehiiv added more features to its built-in communities, including custom profiles and a member directory, a new Community Manager role, mobile-first experience, and email notifications. The question is whether newsletter readers want to participate on the platform when they may already belong to Discord, Reddit, Patreon or another community for the creator.

Social Media

Meta is expanding the Meta Creator Marketing Hub. This connects advertisers and brands with Creators. New features for brands include Partnership Messaging inside the Hub, new filters to help discover content and creators that feature the brand’s products, improved content recommendations, more granular permissions for content access, and easy ad creation (including removal of copyrighted music and stickers). Of course some of this is powered by Meta AI.

Tools

Snapseed, Google’s “pro” image editing app, is rolling out a new Android beta version with community styles, motion blur and portrait blur, and preset and LUT import.

Apple is rolling out Siri AI and Apple Intelligence to more software and devices.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Feedback, Threads Insights, AdSense AI Help Guide

2026-09-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! I hope you are enjoying the waning days of summer. It was 95°F here in the Bay Area this week, which felt more like mid-summer than early-autumn. I am ready for cooler weather.

With the Monday Labor Day holiday here in the US, updates were sparser than usual. But, even so, there are updates for YouTube, Twitch, AdSense, Instagram, Threads and more. Read on!

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts has a new “Get Feedback” tool to evaluate your drafts, now available to US users.
Twitch is testing a Stream Coach that gives personalized feedback and tips on your streams.
The new Apple Duo’s camera doesn’t live up to the iPhone 18 Pro.
IMDb has added Digital Creator as a professional category.
Restream has new integrations with X, including viewer analytics and comment replies.
AdSense added an AI-powered help guide.
AdSense has new automated European consent management settings.
WordPress plugins are now reviewed by automated systems that can stop distribution of releases with malicious code.
Instagram lets you add tagged posts to your profile grid.
Threads has updated and more informative post and profile analytics.
Eligible creators can now apply for the new X Original Content Rewards program.
Meta wants you to use their new Muse personal AI agent.
Plus updates for Dreambeans, Gemini in Google Workspace, Miro, Twitter and more.

AI-Powered Creator Coaches

Platforms are launching specialized AI-powered tools that are designed to help creators optimize their content. These give personalized feedback and tips based on what is working on the platform.

YouTube

As noted a couple of weeks ago, there is a new YouTube Shorts “Get Feedback” tool. While your Short is still a draft in the YouTube mobile app, use “Get Feedback” for evaluation and tips for improving your hook, pacing, visuals and structure. You can choose to edit your Short before you publish. This is available to all 18+ creators in the US, in both the Android and iOS YouTube app.

This is in addition to Ask Studio in YouTube Studio, which can give feedback on your videos (including draft, private and unlisted videos), review scripts, troubleshoot issues, and brainstorm ideas. This is available globally.

Twitch

Twitch is testing a Stream Coach to give you a personalized feedback summary after your streams, including things that worked and areas that didn’t. It illustrates with video clips so you can see the context. It can help with community engagement, channel setup, learning about Twitch culture and monetization. It also includes “a set of best practices curated by Twitch’s Strategic Partner Managers” who are presumably human. Zach Bussey has early access, and posted a review.

Facebook

The Facebook Creator Studio app, which started rolling out broadly in August, has an AI by Meta-powered Creator Assistant, which offers personalized tips and insights. This is available for iPhone in the US and Canada.

The Big Picture

Generic feedback from general-purpose chatbots is often not that helpful. Personalized creative coaches that provide specific individual feedback based on what works for that platform should be more helpful.

But I do wonder if it will push more creators towards a particular style and possibly stifle experimentation and creativity.

Good or bad, expect to see more platforms launching their own coaching tools.

Apple Duo’s New Camera

Apple held their fall hardware showcase this week. A highlight was Duo, Apple’s new folding phone. Apple is touting its camera features:

48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera (same as iPhone 18 Pro)
4K120 fbs video recording in Dolby Vision.
Smart Take automatically captures an image when subjects are posing.
Live preview on the outer display.

But some reviewers think it’s not as good as the latest iPhone Pro.

YouTube, Video and Live Streams

Accounts in the YouTube app on your TV can now be secured with a 4-digit code. You can then unlock your account on TV using the YouTube mobile app on your phone. That way others in your household won’t have access to your account.

YouTube published a new Trends report, concluding, "Audiences have access to more content, communities, and creators than at any other point in history. The result is a culture that is more personalized and less synchronous." But YouTube (naturally) is the mainstream.

IMDb, the movie and TV database is adding “Digital Creator” as a professional category, with sub-professions including Streamer, Vlogger, Video Essayist, Video Creator, Gaming Creator and Influencer.

Restream has new integrations for live streaming on X. You can see viewer analytics from X and reply to X comments inside your Restream studio (just like you can respond to YouTube or Twitch comments).

Twitch shared their “State of Gaming” Report for 2026, with the top games, popular genres, and top streamers.

Web Publishers

The AdSense help center now has an AI-powered "help guide" chatbot (in beta). There are some limitations:

Only available in the English help center.
It's not personalized.
Reader beware: "Occasionally, the guide's responses may vary in accuracy, and decisions based on the guide are the publisher's responsibility." (That means you should validate any suggestions it makes independently!)

AdSense has a new consent management setting: “Maximize message coverage” in the European Regulations Settings.

If you previously selected the Google Consent Management Platform (CMP) or haven’t made a selection, this will be enabled automatically.
It will attempt to serve a fallback consent message when there’s an ad request without a TC string (Transparency and Consent strong) in the EEA, UK or Switzerland. It works if you haven’t added the CMP or the CMP malfunctions.
It will automatically create and publish a new consent message for every new site you add to your AdSense account.
An “Optimize my consent message” setting was added in May. “With consent optimization, your site visitors will see the consent message most likely to drive revenue based on past performance and session data.”
You can turn these settings off if you want to maintain manual control.
This will start working October 9, 30 days after the notice was sent.

WordPress has launched an automated security review for every plugin release. Previously a plugin was reviewed before being added to the directory, but new updates could include malicious code or a vulnerability. If malicious code was detected, then a person on the Plugins Team would have to stop distribution. That’s all automated now, with a cooldown period of 6 hours. Plugin developers that have had a release blocked can fix the release or contact the Plugins Team.

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has been placed on a Leave of Absence. He claims it’s a conspiracy between the Board of Directors and the company CFO Mark Davies (who is the new interim CEO). There hasn’t been an announcement why this was done, but it could be related to ongoing litigation with WP Engine. Meanwhile there’s drama, as Mullenweg is claiming he’s back in charge. It’s not clear what’s going on exactly, but I feel like this doesn’t bode well for the company.

Social Media

On Instagram you can now add the posts you are tagged in to your main profile grid. This is another tool for collaborative posting.

Threads has updated Post and Profile Insights metrics to include information on what drove the results, see how much of your reach is followers, and see audience demographics.

Meta AI generated Summary of the profile or post’s performance.
Views, Viewers, Profile Views and Follows, and whether those numbers are typical or higher or lower than usual.
Views over time, which you can filter by followers and non-followers.
“What impacts your views”, including Reply rate, Like rate, Share rate, Quote rate, and Repost rate.
Viewer demographics by location, age and gender.
Top Sources of Post Views, including Home, Search, Activity and Profile.

X Revenue Sharing has shut down and eligible creators can apply to join Original Content Rewards. X announced the new Original Content Rewards program in August, with a focus on (you guessed it) rewarding original content. Eligible accounts have at least 500 “verified” followers and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions in the past 90 days.

Tools

Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent “built for everyone.” It can perform tasks on your behalf, and can continue working after you close the app. You can connect your Gmail email, calendar, Instagram, health apps, ticket and reservation apps and other services, and it can even pay for things using Link (by Stripe). For Creators, Meta suggests that Muse can help you manage your DMs, emails and calendar, monitor your finances, and act as a fitness coach. Meta claims it’s secure and private. It’s available in the US for iOS, Android and muse.ai.

Dreambeans creates personalized daily stories, including suggested places to explore, shows to watch, and (optional) information from your Calendar, Gmail, Search, YouTube and Gemini. It has graduated from Google Labs and is available for iOS and Android in the US.

The Google Gemini app is now available for Windows.

You can now use Gemini across Google Workspace services. For example, when you access Gemini on the side panel in Google Docs, you can have it create a slide deck. Or when in Gmail, create a spreadsheet; or draft an email when you are in Docs. This is available for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and select Workspace editions.

Google Chat draft messages are now automatically saved, and available across your devices.

Bending Spoons is acquiring Miro, the collaborative whiteboard company (and apparently AI stuff). The usual Bending Spoons MO is to fire the staff from the acquired company, replace them with their own people (who don’t necessarily know the product), and increase prices.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Watch With, Instagram AI-Generated Profiles, TikTok Comments

2026-09-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube (as usual), Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, AdSense, X, and more.

Top Updates

YouTube is expanding access to “Watch With” reaction live streams.
YouTube is making it easier to disclose Branded Content (paid promotions and sponsorships), with age and location gating and automatic labels.
YouTube has a new Channel Memberships hub to help viewers to find channels to join.
YouTube has a new Co-Viewed metric that estimates how many people are watching together on a TV.
There’s a new Creator Insider video that explains the YouTube Algorithm. Watch it!
TikTok is adding new comment features including voice comments, polls and photo carousels.
Twitch Clips are available for DJ Program creators, but won’t include music.
Twitch paid Subscribers can post GIFs in the live stream chat.
Instagram now requires the “AI-Generated Profile” label for profiles featuring an AI-generated person.
AdSense will start counting ad impressions differently in February.
Chrome 154 will always ask permission before loading a site that does not use HTTPS.
Cloudflare could be blocking your site’s RSS feed.
Bluesky has added thread post numbering and more prominent Starter Packs.
X is forcing all US Creators to be paid via X Money, rather than Stripe.
Canva will shut down the remove.bg background remover tool in December.
Google Pics is a new AI image generation and editing platform for Google Workspace.
Google Vidsncan create a video summary of Google Docs, PDFs, and Word files.
Google Photos can now be edited and managed using Gemini Spark, including automated workflows.

YouTube Expands “Watch With” Live Streams

YouTube is expanding access to “Watch With” reaction live streams. If you are in the experiment you will see a “react live” button on eligible streams in the YouTube mobile app. Learn more.

Your camera locks on in horizontal orientation and is combined with the original stream to create a new vertical stream.
Concurrent viewership metrics, public views and watch time are attributed to the original stream.
The reaction stream can earn its own revenue.
Creators can disable this option in their stream settings.

YouTube notes that their Live discovery system “prioritizes authentic, real-time and interactive streams for viewers.” So you should be on camera and speak.

YouTube Branded Content Disclosure

YouTube is making it easier to disclose branded content. See the Branded Content policies and learn more from Creator Insider.

“Branded Content” is the new terminology for paid promotions, which is the industry standard. It includes any content “influenced by a brand partner in exchange for something of value”. It includes product placement, sponsorships and endorsements.
Updated “Includes paid promotion” disclosure label for branded content
Content can be gated by geography and/or viewer age.
Automated branded content detection will soon be used to enforce policies. YouTube may automatically add the disclosure label, but you shouldn’t rely on that.
Updated policy “clarifies that creators must comply with Google Ads policies, and emphasizes existing disclosure requirements.”

Instagram Adds AI-Generated Profile Labels

Instagram has noted that people don’t like it when they engage with a profile that appears human, but actually turns out to be AI-generated. To make that happen less often, Instagram is renaming the "AI Creator" label to the clearer "AI-Generated Profile" label for profiles that feature an AI-generated person.

The label appears alongside the profile and content, where it can be relatively easily seen.

And, importantly, this label is effectively mandatory if you want people to see your content. AI-generated profiles that aren't labeled may have limited reach, which can be fixed by adding the appropriate label.

TiKTok Comments

TikTok is adding new comment features. There are already text, photo and video sticker (GIF) comments. Now they are adding:

Voice comments, up to 60 seconds long. Rolling out globally to 18+ accounts.
Comment polls added by creators. Available globally.
Photo carousel comments. Add up to 9 photos. Available globally
Live Photos. This iPhone feature creates a short animation. Available globally.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is really trying to maximize your view count. There’s a new metric called Views (Co-Viewed) which accounts for people watching together on the same device, like a group watching YouTube TV or the main YouTube app on TV. Learn more. Creator Insider video.

Access in Analytics Advanced Mode under Metrics > Reach.
Takes up to 48 hrs to process
Does not affect public Views or monetization

YouTube is testing alternative retailers for tagged affiliate products in YouTube Shopping, to see if it improves shopping performance. This won’t impact product tags on videos where the Paid Product Placement setting is enabled.

YouTube has a new Channel Memberships hub, with a personalized shelf of channels you are most likely to join (and it doesn't show channels you are already a Member of). It highlights channels that actively post Members-only content and engage with their audience. You can find the memberships page on the left menu on the YouTube site or mobile app, or open www.youtube.com/channel_memberships . Learn more.

If you are a YouTube Creator, watch this Creator Insider interview with YouTube’s senior director of growth and discovery, Todd Beaupre to learn how the algorithm works. The important thing to try to wrap your head around is that the algorithm doesn't push out your videos or your channel. It pulls in recommendations for viewers based on their viewing habits and interests. It's about the audience. And watch it for the myth busting.

If you watch YouTube on your TV, it’s easier to use your phone to engage. You don’t need to connect your phone and the TV, just be signed into the same account. You can use your phone to comment or subscribe, or browse for other videos to play on your TV.

On Twitch, Clips are now available to DJ Program creators, editors and moderators. But there’s a catch: Clips only include non-music audio, such as the streamer’s voice, crowd reactions and Chat hype. DJ Program streams also cannot be saved as VOD (video on demand) or used to create Highlights.

Also on Twitch, Tier 2 or higher subscribers can now send GIFs in chat. Streamers can disable this feature.

Web Publishing

AdSense will start counting impressions differently. Currently banner ad impressions are count-on-download, with an impression counted as soon as it begins to download on the viewer’s device. This is shifting to the industry standard begin-to-render counting, which is counted when the ad has downloaded and begins to render on the device. This will likely decrease the number of impressions, but more accurately represents how many times the ad has been seen. See the link for tips on how to run reports to estimate impact and best practices. This goes into effect on February 17, 2027.

This week Chrome 154 beta was released, with the main release in October. This is notable because the default settings will be updated to enable “Always Use Secure Connections”. If a site does not use HTTPS, Chrome will ask the user’s permission before loading the site. Well over 90% of websites use HTTPS, so this probably doesn’t affect you. However, if you’ve been waiting to implement HTTPS for some reason, now is the time to do that.

If you use Cloudflare to prevent your website or blog from being scraped by bots, you should whitelist the non-malicious RSS readers. If you don’t, your readers who follow your updates by using an RSS feed reader will also be blocked.

Social Media

On Bluesky, thread post numbering is out of beta. Now post threads are numbered automatically.

Bluesky is also highlighting Starter Packs (collections of profiles to follow) in the main search box. It’s also easier to opt out of Starter Packs if you don’t want to be included.

Starting this week, US creators monetizing on X will be paid via X Money, rather than Stripe. X Money is part of Elon Musk’s dream for turning X into an “everything app”, including financial services.

Tools

Remove.bg is a popular image background removal tool. It was acquired by Canva and will be shutting down on December 1. According to the FAQ, this is because Canva doesn’t want to maintain two platforms. While Remove.bg has a free option for lower resolution exports, Canva requires a paid account to use the tool.

Google Pics (pics.new) is a new Google Workspace AI image creation and editing tool that is integrated with Slides, Docs and Drive.

Uses the Nano Banana image editing model.
Easily isolate and edit objects without altering the rest of your image.
Modify and translate text in an image without disrupting the design or changing the font.
Change image dimensions for web, social media, print.
Upscales images to 2K or 4K
Maintains a version history so you can revert unwanted changes.
Generates multiple options from a single prompt.
When you edit an image in Docs or Slides, you use the Pics precision AI tools without switching apps.
It has the same sharing and collaboration options as other Google Workspace services like Slides and Docs.
Available with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, Workspace Experiments, or Business or Enterprise Workspace account.

Use Google Vids to create a video summary of Google Docs, PDFs and Word files. This is available with an AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription, or a Google Workspace account.

There are new editing tools for Google Photos, using Gemini Spark. Learn more.

Spark can “handle complex, multi-stage workflows”, so you can prompt multiple actions as a single task.
You can set up recurring tasks with automated routines, like collecting weekly photo highlights.
You can organize and share private or group albums across apps like Gmail and Docs,
You can extract formatted text from screenshots or receipts
Edits are made to a new copy of an image so that the original isn’t changed.
New albums are private by default, and Spark asks for confirmation before completing actions.

You can now add custom instructions to Ask Gemini in Google Chat and Drive, and the Gemini side panel in Slides, Sheets and Gmail. Describe your style, tone and formatting preferences, and Gemini will save those instructions. See availability.

Gemini Audio models are being integrated with Google Workspace, allowing “real-time conversation”.

Gmail Live lets you search your email inbox for information. Available for AI Plus, Pro and Ultra; and Google Workspace.
Docs Live lets you “engage in real-time conversation” to “build structured, context-aware documents on the fly.” It can help you organize your thoughts and pull relevant details from Gmail, Drive, Chat and the web. Available for AI Pro and Ultra; and Google Workspace.
Keep Live can process a stream of consciousness and turn them into structured lists and notes. Available for AI Plus, Pro and Ultra; and Google Workspace.

Google’s latest music generation model, Lyria 3.5 is now available in the Gemini app. You can select the genre and style, start from templates and choose longer or shorter tracks.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shopping + Amazon, Instagram Reels Drafts, Firefly Music

2026-08-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube, Instagram Bluesky, Substack, Google Search, Firefly, Gemini and more.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

Top Updates

Creators monetizing with YouTube Shopping in the US can now tag Amazon products.
Instagram can now create a “first draft” of a Reel from your video clips.
Meta settled a huge lawsuit, will pay $18B, and had to add new teen safety features. They are strongly requesting YouTube and Twitch implement the same.
YouTube is rolling out a “Get Feedback” button to review your Shorts drafts.
YouTube is testing creating multiple custom feeds, and having those replace the topic chips on the mobile app Home screen.
Bluesky now lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long.
Bluesky lets you hide your posts from Discover.
Threads is testing a new embedded podcast format that shows animated synced captions.
Substack has a new Creator Match feature to help connect with collaborators.
Substack lets you target your publication specific subscribers using tags and segments.
Patreon published their roadmap, including improvements for small creators.
Google Search will no longer apply manual actions under their site reputation policy in the European Economic Area.
WordPress(dot)com has a new ChatGPT plugin that lets ou manage your site from ChatGPT.
Adobe Firefly can generate universally licensed music for your video. And sound effects!
Plus updates for Gemini Omni, Gemini Notebook, Google Flow, Adobe Photoshop and more.

YouTube Shopping + Amazon

YouTube Creators in the YouTube Partner Program can now tag products from Amazon. Note that this does not include all Amazon products, but rather a “curated catalog of highly requested and trending products.”

Eligibility requirements:

U.S. Creators
YouTube Partner Program with the YouTube Shopping affiliate program.
Not available if your channel is Made for Kids or a music channel.
Active account in the Amazon Influencer Program (AIP) or Amazon Associates Program (AAP).

You must connect your YouTube channel to your AIP or AAP account, starting from your Amazon Storefront.

How it works:

If a viewer clicks a tagged Amazon product, the Amazon mobile app or website opens. You can earn if the person then purchases something.
Viewers outside the US may see the tags and be directed to a local merchant, local Amazon storefront, or the US Amazon storefront.
Earnings are paid through your AdSense for YouTube account, along with your other YouTube Shopping revenue. There is a longer lag than ad revenue, so, for example, earnings from January get paid out in March.
If you have auto-tagging enabled, your recent uploads will be reviewed to tag eligible Amazon products.
You only see aggregated Analytics. That means you see your daily earnings, but no breakdowns by product or video.

Instagram First Draft for Reels

Instagram has a new tool that creates a “First Draft” of your video, to jump-start your creative process.

Select clips and tap the First Draft button to create an editable draft.
You can reorder, remove, or adjust the clips in the draft.
Automatically trims pauses and silences in talking videos.
Start from the Reels gallery or the Instagram camera.
Currently iOS only.

Meta Settles Lawsuit & Announces Teen Protections

Meta settled a lawsuit filed by a coalition of 29 US state Attorneys General by paying $18 billion (with a B) that can fund youth online safety initiatives.

The suit claimed that Meta “designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that drive compulsive use by children and teens to their mental and physical detriment, all the while misleading users, their families, and the public regarding the existence and severity of these risks.”

Part of the settlement requires Meta to implement new teen protections on Facebook and Instagram.

Default 2 hour daily time limit
Apps blocked between midnight and 6AM
Notifications muted during school hours (8AM and 3PM).
Prompts to review activity every 15 minutes and after 60 minutes and 90 minutes of activity.
Option to set a non-algorithmic feed as the default, and turn off autoplay.
Teens won’t see the number of likes and reactions on posts.
Easier to report harmful content, with the requirement that Meta respond to 90% of reports within 6 hours.
Cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters blocked.
Improved technology for age detection.
Improved systems to ensure age-appropriate content.
Continue existing practices to default teens to private accounts, prevent contact from suspicious adults, and strengthen parental controls.

Meta is also prohibited from making “false, misleading or deceptive statements” about its safety features. We’ll see how that goes.

Meta is positioning itself as setting the industry standard, despite the information that was revealed during the suit that the company took intentional steps to ignore issues regarding teen safety.

They are aggressively calling on TikTok and YouTube to implement the same measures. Not surprisingly, neither platform has responded.

And unless these limits are implemented truly industry-wide, teens will just go elsewhere. Maybe this is a win for Twitch?

How will this affect creators?

Beyond how the new limitations affect teen creators, any creator with a teen audience may see lower views and engagement.

There will likely be more intrusive age verification measures, which can affect everyone.

And the requirements to reply to teen reports within 6 hours will almost certainly mean more automated content reviews.

YouTube and Video

A new “Get Feedback” tool gives you insights into your YouTube Shorts before you publish. Upload an unlisted draft of your Short (uploaded on mobile), then click the Get Feedback button for feedback on the hook, pacing and structure. This is being tested as VibeCheck in YouTube Labs (join here to test experimental features).

YouTube is experimenting with new features for Custom Feeds. Custom Feeds let you use a prompt to create a feed from the button at the top of your Home feed. There is a new option to create multiple custom feeds (mobile, US, English, History on). And in the mobile app, the topic chips are replaced by the Custom Feeds. If you try it, send feedback.

Bluesky now supports longer videos. Publish videos up to 10 minutes long (previously 3 minutes), and up to 300MB. Click the link for a thread highlighting neat videos.

TikTok launched a Substack newsletter to highlight TikTok LIVE creators.

Web Publishing

Substack Creator Match is a new feature that helps you find other creators with a similar audience size and similar interests to potentially collab with.

Personalize your Substack publication:

Assign tags to your subscribers, and you can now target posts to subscribers in a specific segment or with a particular tag.
Posts (written, podcast or video) can have content blocks personalized by subscription status (free, paid or founding).
Comments can be limited to subscribers (paid, or both free and paid)

Patreon published their roadmap. They are working on improved discovery for smaller creators and new features for everyone.

Niches are topic-based community spaces for multiple creators and fans.
Discovery is shifting from finding similar creators (which favors big creators) to similar content.
They are working to get more fans onto Patreon (they are still figuring this out).
Video features: Clips from videos, suggested previews of videos, improved video playback and casting, 18+ video.
Live streaming features: easier Live scheduling, Live Q&A, Live practice mode
Improved payment and analytics features
Other features: Quip quotes (a Quip is like a Tweet), Fan profiles, add images to comments, unlock header image in paid posts (so everyone can see it), paid posts in the Home feed.

Google Search will handle manual action under the site reputation policy differently in Europe (the EEA). This policy addresses the practice where 3rd party content is published on a trusted site, using that site’s good reputation to rank better in search. Outside the EEA, if a manual action is applied to a site under this policy, it will affect that portion of the site ranking in Search. In the EEA, the manual action won’t apply, but Google may treat that portion of the site separately so that it may eventually rank differently.

WordPress(dot)com (the paid WordPress hosting site, not the free software) has a new ChatGPT plugin. That lets you use ChatGPT to manage your blog (such as scheduling a post), check stats and comments, and update your site (such as adding pages).

Social Media

Bluesky now lets you hide your posts from non-followers in Discover, because “not everyone wants to go viral.”

Threads is testing a new feature that adds an animated transcript above a shared podcast.

This week in the Fediverse: Flipboard acquires Graze, the feed builder working to monetize the open social web

Tools

Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) is changing the way usage limits work. Usage limits will factor in prompt complexity, chat length, the number of sources and features you use. Limits refresh every 5 hours, and if you reach your limit, you can defer outputs like Video Overviews until later.

Google Flow updates via Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash: more control over start and end frames (to keep the characters and narrative consistent), export video in 1080p or 4K resolution, and you can draft videos at 360p (faster, fewer credits required). Flow is Google’s AI-powered movie-making platform. Learn more about Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash.

Adobe Firefly has new audio features: Generate Music matching your video mood (and you don’t have to worry about music licenses), Generate Speech (with the option to use ElevenLabs) for voiceovers, and Generate Sound Effects. Gemini Omni Flash has been added as a 3rd party model option. And there are improvements to AI Assistant (still in beta).

Adobe Photoshop also has a number of updates. Too many to list here, but if you are a Photoshop user you should check it out.

Google Calendar is making it easier to join 3rd party video meetings (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex) from a Calendar event. It automatically turns meeting links and passcodes into a “Join meeting” link.

Google Workspace Chat Space owners and managers can control who can view the Space member list.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Views, Twitch Affiliate Sponsorships, Search Preferred Sources

2026-08-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! I hope you are enjoying the last days of summer.

This week there’s updates to YouTube views counts, Stations, and AI claims, Twitch sponsorships, Google Search Preferred Sources, beehiiv, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

Top Updates

YouTube will now count a “View” from the first frame long form videos. When someone stops to watch or clicks a thumbnail, that’s an Engaged View.
YouTube is expanding Stations beyond music videos. They may include creator content, media channels and podcasts, and can appear in the Home Feed and Search on YouTube and YouTube Music.
Twitch Affiliates can now access sponsorships. And all Partners and Affiliates can add Sponsorship Highlight clips to their Creator Profile.
Google Search has published the code for an interactive Preferred Source button you can add to your website or blog.
YouTube made it easier to manage AI Likeness claims on your channel.
YouTube improved the TV viewing interface, especially for watching Shows and Podcasts.
Edits lets you organize your video projects into folders, and can generate bilingual captions.
LinkedIn Live events can be automatically turned into Clips.
LinkedIn adds a message in Post Analytics if your post is reported as AI slop.
Divine, the Vine reboot, has publicly launched. Watch (or record) looping 6 second videos.
beehiiv added AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) features to its websites.
WordPress 7.1 is out, with improved image handling, easy responsive design styling, more consistent post editor and more.
Meta wants pages and professional profiles to pay to post links on Facebook.
Record a Google Slides presentation with Google Vids,
Google Notebooks now lets you copy entire notebooks.

YouTube Views Counted from the First Frame

On August 24, YouTube will start counting "Views" on long-form videos, podcasts and live streams the way Shorts Views are counted, “from the very first frame". This makes Views more consistent across formats, and comparable to Views counted on other video platforms.

For example, imagine if someone hovers over a video on the Home page and the video starts playing. That will now be a View, even if only the first frame opens.

If the person watches more of your video or clicks a video thumbnail, that will be counted as an Engaged View. (No, people don’t need to watch 30 seconds, that’s a myth.)

Right now, Engaged Views and Views for longform videos are the same. When this change launches, you will likely start to see higher Views than Engaged Views. The Views count on existing videos will not be updated retroactively.

Check out my write-up for all the details.

The new Views will be what is publicly visible. You can find your channel’s Engaged Views in YouTube Studio Analytics Advanced Mode.
This will not change metrics like Click Through Rate (CTR) or Average View Duration (AVD).
This will not affect monetization eligibility or your revenue.

YouTube Stations Expansion

YouTube is expanding experimental Stations. A Station is a 24/7 stream of curated videos, like a TV station. It also has a live chat that lets viewers watch or listen together.
This initially piloted with a small group of music artists, but now will now include creator content, media channels, podcasts and new music artists.

You may see Stations recommended in your Home and Search feeds

Available in YouTube and YouTube Music.
Available on mobile, desktop and TVs.
Available globally, except in Portugal, Switzerland and Turkiye.
It includes a limited number of new creators.

More Sponsorships for Twitch Streamers

Twitch announced several updates that make it easier for streamers to earn from sponsorships.

Twitch Affiliates can now access sponsorship deals on the Twitch Sponsorship Dashboard. This was previously limited to Partners.

Affiliates must take the Creator Sponsorships course in Creator Camp to be Creator Sponsorship Certified and be eligible for sponsorship opportunities.

Twitch is partnering with a company called Wehype “to surface additional sponsorship offers directly in your dashboard. You can find invites under Third Party Campaigns.

And Partners and Affiliates can customize their Creator Profile with clips that “showcase the type of sponsored content you create” in the Sponsorship Highlights section. Only brands with an “advertising relationship with Twitch” can see your Creator Profile.

Is this a good thing? Word is that the offered sponsorships often don’t have very favorable terms, so Affiliates should be sure to understand the agreement before jumping in.

New Interactive Preferred Source Button

If you publish a blog or news publication, and it’s available to be added as a Preferred Source, it’s time to update the button on your site.

People can set their favorite publications as a Preferred Source for Google Search, which makes those sources more easily found in Search Top Stories, Discover, AI Overviews and AI Mode.

When this originally launched, Google offered publishers a pretty basic button. Now there’s an interactive button that only requires adding a couple of lines of javascript to your site..

When a site visitor clicks the button, it adds the site as a Preferred Source to their Google Account, and then returns them to the page where the button was clicked.

Learn how to implement the Add Preferred Sources button.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has made it easier to manage content restrictions for using an AI likeness. The Copyright menu on the Video Details Page is now “Claims”. There are also new dispute categories if you think someone incorrectly claimed your video used a generative AI likeness of them. YouTube notes that this is not a policy change, and likeness claims do not result in Community Guidelines or copyright strikes (although the video may be blocked).

YouTube has made a number of improvements for TVs:

Immersive pages for Shows (now widely available to Creators)
Show and Podcast tabs on the Watch page, making it easy to navigate to the next episode.
Previous/Next buttons to
Shortcut to Shorts on the left navigation menu.
Live badge on the Top Channels shelf.
Music Artist Channel Pages have a new Releases (Albums) shelf

Twitch reminds streamers to beware of phishing scams and “think before you click”. If your account is hacked, follow these steps (or contact support).

Edits, Instagram’s video editing app, has new features: organize projects into folders, use AI to turn a photo into a video clip (US only), and save text styles. They also highlighted its bilingual captioning feature, available in 15 languages, and lyric captions.

StreamYard has made it easier to control the volume of shared audio.

LinkedIn Live Events can now be easily turned into Clips. Open “Create a Clip” on the Event Management page and there are automatically created “Recommended Clips” and "Recommended Chapters”. You can edit those before publishing and manually create Clips. This feature is available to page admins.

If you miss Vine, check out the reboot site Divine. You can watch millions of clips from the original Vine platform that was killed by Twitter. And you can add your own videos by recording with the in-app camera (limited to prevent AI or unoriginal clips).

Web Publishing

The Google Search August 2026 Spam Update rolled out. Check your Analytics to see if it looks like your site was affected.

WordPress 7.1 (“Mary Lou”) is out.

Easily style a block in the Site Editor for different screen sizes without custom CSS. Responsive design made easy.
The admin bar is always at the top of the screen.
Updated cropping tool in the media editor.
Improved image handling in the browser, and native support for AVIF, HEIC, and HDR.
For collaborative work, notes support rich text and mentions, and can be left on a specific bit of text.
Create audio playlists with an optional waveform visualizer.
Customize content breakpoints for mobile and tablets.
Organize content into tabbed panels.
Add custom icon collections.
Give Buttons distinct styles
More consistent post editor.

beehiiv added new features that supposedly increase visibility for AI. It’s not clear to me that any of this AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) will actually help your site be cited more often, beyond regular SEO. But it’s there:

Easily add structured data for FAQ, How-To, Video, Events and other types of content.
An llms.txt file for your content. (There’s no evidence any AI provider uses this)
Author pages include Person and ProfilePage markup that link to any social accounts you’ve connected.
Paywalled posts now have the proper paywall markup.
AI Crawl Control (in partnership with Cloudflare) lets you see which AI bots have crawled your content, and control crawler access. This is available with a custom domain.
beehiiv Agent (formerly Copilot) can now hel pyou design your website or digital products.

Social Media

Meta on Facebook is testing pushing Meta One subscriptions to Pages that share links. According to posts on Threads, after sharing 2 posts with links, there’s a popup that says you need Meta One to “share links more often”. A Meta One Advanced plan that allows 8 Facebook Posts with links and 4 Instagram Posts with links, is $50 per month, which is steep for a small business, club or organization. Yes, there are other features, but they are aimed at “growing” your Page.

Meta is also informing some users that their Facebook Page or professional profile will be limited to sharing links in two posts per month, unless they pay for Meta Verified by December 16th. Apparently this is a limited test. Meta Verified is not the same as Meta One. It includes verification and direct support.

LinkedIn’s Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan says that over a million people have clicked the “seems like AI slop” reporting option since it launched two weeks ago. Over the past few weeks there has also been 40% fewer views on content classified as AI slop. AI slop may have reduced distribution, based on multiple signals (not just reports). Now LinkedIn will add a message in Post Analytics if your post has received enough community reports. This is worth keeping an eye on, especially if you use generative AI tools.

Bluesky is redesigning the notifications tab.

Tools

There’s a new option in Google Slides that lets you record a presentation using Google Vids from the Slides interface. There’s a new Record button on the right panel. This feature is available to everyone with either a personal or Workspace account.

If you get unwanted event invites, you can now block those individuals in Google Calendar. This uses the Google-wide blocklist, so will block the account in Chat, Maps, Photos and other Google products.

Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) lets you copy entire notebooks, including the sources and studio items (Audio and Video Overviews, Study Guides, Slide Decks, Quizzes, Flashcards, including any generation prompts). User-generated notes and chat are not copied. Copying can be disabled by Notebook owners.

YouTube Counts Views From the Very First Frame

2026-08-20T21:51:48.215-07:00

YouTube will start counting "Views" of long form videos and livestreams from the very first frame of the video. This matches how Shorts Views have been counted since March 2025.

Creators can find "Engaged View" metrics in Analytics Advanced Mode to see stats that use the original views metric. Engaged Views are what YouTube uses for monetization eligibility and earnings.

This likely means that public video views will increase when this change goes into effect on August 24th.

Why is YouTube making this change?

Email from YouTube about the views update

This update does make view counts a little less confusing:

Views in all formats will be counted the same way.
This better matches how Views are counted on other platforms.

This is especially useful for creators who make Brand deals. As YouTube says:

We hope that having metric parity across all formats gives creators a clearer picture of their overall exposure and makes it easier to confidently express their true scale and value to brand partners and sponsors!

And who doesn't love higher numbers?

What is an Engaged View? The 30-Second View Myth

There's a myth that YouTube only counted views after someone watched a video for 30 seconds. YouTube, for their part, never actually disclosed how views were counted, beyond saying they counted "legitimate views." People filled the knowledge gap with assumptions.

30 seconds isn't a totally crazy number. Advertisers pay after a viewer watches at least 30 seconds of a video ad (or the entire video if it's shorter than 30 seconds). So that seems like a significant view duration.

So how does YouTube count Views (or Engaged Views under the new metrics)?

The official Creator Insider channel lays it out in Engaged Views Explained.

A "View" will be counted if a video starts playing on the Home page or Shorts feed.
An "Engaged View" is counted if the person continues to watch past the first frame for "some amount of seconds". The required number of seconds can vary.
An "Engaged View" is also counted if someone clicks the thumbnail and starts to watch the video.
"Views" are not the same as Impressions. Impressions are counted when a viewer sees your video thumbnail on the YouTube homepage, feeds, Search, Playlists and recommendations. If it doesn't start playing the video, or the viewer doesn't click, it's just an Impression.

How To See Your Channel's Engaged Views

If you are interested in how people watched your videos beyond the first frame, you'll have to look at Engaged Views, Average View Duration (AVD) and other metrics in Analytics in YouTube Studio.

Find your Engaged Views Metrics

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio (studio.youtube.com, not the mobile app)

2. Click Analytics on the left menu

3. Click the Advanced Mode button at top right

4. Click the Metrics drop-down menu on the left panel and select Engaged Views.

5. You can change the Breakdown to view by Content, Geography, Traffic Source or other metrics.

Click the bookmark icon at top right to save the report, so it's easy to return to later.

What about historical Views?

Existing videos will keep their historical View count using the original metrics. On August 24, Views will start diverging from Engaged Views for long form videos.

To accurately compare performance to older videos, be sure to look at Engaged Views, not Views.

Other Metrics Based on Engaged Views

Other metrics are based on Engaged Views.

Click Through Rate: See what percentage of Impressions resulted in a Click on the video thumbnail.
Average View Duration: Average minutes watched among those who stayed to watch.
Audience Retention: See how moments held viewer attention.

A click on a video thumbnail is considered an Engaged View, as is a view where the viewer "stayed to watch".

For more information see the YouTube Help Center article: Understand your YouTube content performance.

Monetization Won't Be Affected

This update does not change the monetization eligibility requirements or YouTube Partner Program earnings.

Last week YouTube announced new requirements for YouTube Partner Program eligibility. Those eligibility requirements are based on Qualified Shorts Views or Qualified Video Watch Hours. This is based on Engaged Shorts Views and Engaged Video Watch Hours, excluding private and unlisted videos and ad campaigns (and excluding Shorts from watch time).

Earnings from the Shorts ad revenue pool continues to be based on eligible Engaged Views, and revenue from YouTube Premium is based on Engaged Watch Hours. Other ways of earnings aren't based on video views.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Partner Program Eligibility, Twitch AI Training, Facebook Creator Studio

2026-08-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube partners, Twitch streamers, Facebook, Instagram and X creators and more. Plus there’s a brand new Google Pixel phone with new Creator Suite features.

My tip for the week: Set up your social properties (YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok) in Search Console, and compare them to your on-platform metrics.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday

Top Updates

Tougher YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements starting February 1.
YouTube channel Managers will receive email notifications for copyright claims.
Ask YouTube is rolling out on mobile devices in the US.
Twitch now lets you opt out of training Amazon’s generative AI models.
Twitch lets you reward top gifters an exclusive badge.
Twitch is rolling out comments on Clips.
Google Search Profiles are available to more creators.
The new Pixel 11 includes the Pixel Camera Creator Suite, Magic Capture, Camera Looks and more.
Google Search Console Generative AI performance reports are rolling out to everyone.
The Facebook Creator Studio app is now available to creators in the US and Canada on iPhone.
Bluesky now lets you hide reposts from people you follow.
Bluesky is testing automatic thread post numbering and longer video uploads.
X “under the hood” shows labels on your posts that could affect visibility in the “For You” feed.
Gemini now lets you turn off visible watermarks on generated content.
Spotify will soon require AI Artists to add an AI Persona badge, and will stop recommending them.
Anthropic is watermarking Claude-generated text.

Joining the YouTube Partner Program is getting harder

This week YouTube announced that there will be changes to YouTube Partner Program eligibility and requirements to continue earning from the program. These changes go into effect February 1, 2026.

I’ve written up a detailed overview of all the changes. But here’s the short version:

The eligibility requirements for the Fan Funding & Shopping tier of the YouTube Partner Program haven’t changed.

500 subscribers
3,000 qualified watch hours in the past year OR 3 million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days
At least 3 valid public uploads in the past 90 days.

The eligibility requirements for Ad Revenue Sharing & Premium revenue are increasing significantly.

1,000 subscribers (that’s the same)
8,000 qualified watch hours in the past year (up from 4,000) OR 20M qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days (up from 10M).

To maintain active status in the YouTube Partner Program, you need one of the following:

1,000 qualified watch hours in the past year OR
1M qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days OR
2 longform videos OR 5 Shorts in the past 90 days

To earn from the Shorts Creator Pool revenue sharing, you need to maintain 10M qualified Shorts views over the past 90 days. If you don’t meet that requirement you can still earn ad revenue from long-form videos, and from fan funding and Shopping.

There should also be more earnings from Premium Lite subscriptions and there will be new Shorts incentives to be announced in the future

If you are in the YouTube Partner Program now, you need to accept the new terms, and then make sure you maintain active status (which is as easy as posting a new Short every couple weeks).

Twitch Opt-Out for AI Training

Twitch has opted in your channel to train Amazon's generative AI content models. You can now opt out at twitch.tv/settings/security. Learn more.

It isn’t clear if it’s just the opt-out setting that’s new, or if the training is new too (Twitch hasn't been clear about that).

If you do not opt out, your stream, the stream's chat, VODs, Clips, Highlights, text and images on your Channel can be used to train Amazon’s AI.
Opting out does not opt your channel out of other AI features on Twitch.
This includes “using Al-supported Twitch features that benefit the community by facilitating streamer growth and monetization (such as real-time sponsorship campaign assistance), viewer discovery (such as recommendations), and community safety (such as AutoMod).”
If you chat on someone else's channel, and they have not opted out, your chat posts there can be used for AI training.

There has been enormous backlash against this change, and it doesn’t seem like Twitch itself is even all-in.

Some Twitch creators are tagging their content “aioptedout” to indicate they have turned off this setting.
There was a drop in Amazon’s stocks, attributed to this update.
Twitch acknowledged that this change is “opt out” because no one would voluntarily opt in.

Google Search Profile Expansion

Google Search Profiles are now available to more Creators. Search Profiles launched in June, letting creators customize their profile with a bio, website, social media links and other content.

This week Google reduced the eligibility requirements. Now required:

YouTube: 35,000 (formerly 100,000)
Instagram: 35,000 (formerly 100,000)
X: 35,000 (formerly 100,000)
TikTok: 100,000 (formerly 300,000)

If you are eligible, set yours up at profile.google.com/claim.

Pixel Features For Creators

This week was the annual “Made by Google” event that introduces the latest Pixel hardware, along with new features that will be available on the new Pixel 11.

Some software highlights for folks who use their phones for creative work:

Pixel Camera Creator Suite: Tools in the camera viewfinder, including social media gridlines, on-screen teleprompter, and audio visualizer. Upgraded Speech Enhancement reduces background noises like wind, traffic and crowds. Captured videos are saved to project folders in Google Photos where the Storyboard tool lets you trim and rearrange clips. Learn more.
Magic Capture: Start a session and Magic Capture analyzes hundreds of frames to “create well-timed, high-quality photos” and videos. It’s promoted as being able to stay “in the moment” while your phone captures action shots.
Camera Looks: Choose a style for your images. You can set a default photo look (Natural, Vanilla (warm, golden glow), or Shadows (contrasty)) or choose Black Tie, Minimal, Editorial, Classic or Velvet styles.
ASL-to-text: Google Deep Mind introduced a sign-language-to-text translation model. This powers sign-language-to-text dictation in Gboard and Live Transcribe. (Click the link to see the demo)
Live Translate: Translates videos and audio in real-time.

YouTube and Video

YouTube channel managers, in addition to owners, will soon start receiving email notifications for copyright claims and removal requests.

Ask YouTube, YouTube’s “conversational search experience” is rolling out to mobile devices. This is available in English in the US.

YouTube shared their design principals for updating the interface on desktop, mobile and TV: Reducing visual clutter, streamlining navigation, reducing redundant actions, and keeping consistent across the app.

Twitch lets you reward top gifters an exclusive badge. If you run a Creator Badge Drop event, viewers can earn badges from subscribing, gifting subscriptions or watching the stream. If the creator enables the Top Supporter Reward there is a gifting leaderboard, top gifters (top 1, 3, 5 or 10) at the end of the stream permanently unlock the special badge. Learn more about Creator Badge Drops.

Comments on Twitch Clips are rolling out. Comments will be turned on for all Clips by default (but you can turn them off). There will be moderation tools and use your channel’s AutoMod settings, and you can limit comments to subscribers, followers, or require email or phone verification. You’ll be notified when this is turned on for your channel. Learn more.

The X video editor now lets you add text overlays on your video. This is available for iOS only.

Web Publishing

Google Search Console Generative AI performance reports are now rolled out to everyone (or most accounts anyway). When you are in Search Console, open the left menu and expand the Performance tab to see the Generative AI option. This shows impressions from features like AI Search Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country and device type. It does not show clicks. (Hat tip to Barry Schwartz @ SEO Roundtable)

WordPress 7.0.4 is available, with a security update. Be sure to keep your WordPress site updated!

Blogger has fixed a bug that disabled a large number of blogs. If this affected you, be sure to appeal.

Social Media

The Facebook Creator Studio app is now available to all creators in the US and Canada using iPhones. It includes an “AI by Meta” Creator Assistant with personalized tips and insights, plus an AI-powered comment replies tool. The app initially launched to a small group of creators at the beginning of June.

Instagram updated their wordmark - the stylized written-out “Instagram”. See what you think of the new font.

Bluesky now lets you follow someone and hide their reposts from your feeds.

Bluesky has two new beta features you can enable in your account settings: Automatic numbering of posts in a thread and longer video uploads (up to 10 minutes).

Are you shadow-banned on X? X is open-sourcing the code that affects a post’s visibility in the “For You” timeline. If you have made at least 10 posts in the past month, you will be able to check the “Under the hood” page to see any labels on the posts that can affect visibility. This is currently only available to a small group of creators (a randomized test group of eligible accounts at least one year old).

More AI Updates

Gemini now lets you turn off visible watermarks on image, video, and music creations. They will still have machine-readable SynthID watermarks and C2PA metadata. This setting is not available for work or school accounts, or in India, South Korea and Vietnam.

You can now connect more third party apps to Gemini, including Granola, Otter.ai, Wix, Ticketmaster, iHeartRadio, Pandora and more.

Sheets canvas is a new Gemini-powered feature that “turns your Google Sheets spreadsheets into custom, interactive ‘mini-apps’.” This is available to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and Google Workspace customers.

Spotify will soon add a new AI Persona badge to indicate an artist’s identity may be AI generated. AI Personas will not be included in editorial or algorithmic recommendations. Artists are expected to self-identify as AI, but Spotify will also review Artist profiles to identify photorealistic AI-generated identities.

Anthropic will watermark text generated by Claude and its other AI models. This is to comply with the new EU AI labeling law that went into effect on August 2nd.The watermark will persist when the text is copy-pasted, but may not survive editing.

New YouTube Partner Program Eligibility Requirements and New Earning Options

2026-08-11T00:38:03.359-07:00

YouTube announced major changes to the YouTube Partner Program that take effect on February 1, 2027.

Higher Shorts views and watch time eligibility requirements for new applications for ad revenue sharing. The requirements for the fan funding tier have not changed.
New requirements to maintain your status in the program.
More revenue from YouTube Premium Lite and new Shorts earning opportunities.

Channels that are currently in the YouTube Partner Program do not need to meet the new eligibility requirements, but will need to follow the new requirements for maintaining your Partner Program status.

Why the changes? Amjad Hanif, YouTube VP of Creator Product says:
“We want to make sure the earnings you get from the program are meaningful and allow you to reinvest in your channel.” It’s so you can “build a business”.

What he doesn’t say, but what I suspect is true, is that accounts that don’t pay out every month are an unwanted operating expense. These changes mean fewer new channels will be eligible, and existing small channels may eventually drop out, because they don’t meet the new maintenance thresholds.

That’s more in line with what Rene Ritchie says on Creator Insider:
"There are so many more creators, channels, and formats, and so much more content. To make sure YPP scales, remains sustainable, provides investment in new creator incentives, and continues to reward active engagement in meaningful ways, [these changes are being made]”

What do channels currently in the YouTube Partner Program need to do?

If your channel is currently in the YouTube Partner Program, you will need to accept the new terms of service by January 31, 2027.

Note that if you do not accept the terms, that will not affect your status in the YouTube Partner Program, but you won’t be able to earn from the covered monetization features.

You can find the new terms in YouTube Studio on the dashboard or Earn tab. As of this writing they don’t appear to be available yet.

You should also be aware of the new requirements for maintaining your status in the program (read on).

New YouTube Partner Program Eligibility Requirements

Currently there are two levels of the YouTube Partner Program, the entry level fan funding tier, and the higher tier that includes ad revenue sharing and Premium revenue.

You can check your channel’s current progress towards eligibility in YouTube Studio on the $ Earn tab.

Fan Funding Tier Eligibility

Eligibility for the fan funding tier is not changing. This includes Memberships, Supers, YouTube Shopping, and Creator Partnerships (Brand Deals).

Subscribers: 500
Viewership: Either 3,000 qualified watch hours in the past year
OR 3 Million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days.
Content: At least 3 public uploads in the past 90 days.

If you originally set up fan funding before 2023, you may need to accept the newer Commerce Product Module of the YouTube Partner Program terms by January 31, 2027.

Ad Revenue Sharing Eligibility

To earn from ad revenue sharing and YouTube Premium subscription fees, there is a higher eligibility threshold.

The last update to the ad revenue sharing eligibility requirements was in 2018. At that time, the requirements were increased to 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours watch time over the past year.

Shorts ad revenue sharing launched in 2023. You could meet the eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program with 10 Million Shorts views in the past 3 months.

The new requirements are significantly higher.

Subscribers: 1,000 (this isn’t changing)
Viewership: Either 8,000 qualified watch hours in the past 365 days
OR 20 Million Shorts views in the past 90 days.

This does not affect current YouTube Partners, however, there will be new requirements to maintain your YouTube Partner Program status.

What are qualified watch hours and qualified Shorts views?

The YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements are based on qualified watch hours of long form videos or qualified Shorts views (formerly valid public watch hours and views). That won’t include all watch time and views. This isn’t really a change, but it’s worth a recap.

Note: Check the Earn tab in YouTube Studio to see your channel’s progress.

Qualified Watch Hours

Qualified Watch Hours includes watch hours from public long-form videos, including livestreams converted to video on demand.

It does not include:

Unlisted or private videos or livestreams.
Deleted videos or livestreams
YouTube Shorts
Ad campaigns

Qualified Shorts Views

In 2025, YouTube changed the way Shorts views are counted. Currently “Views” are more like impressions. When a viewer stops to watch, that is counted as an “Engaged View”.

Qualified Shorts Views include qualifying engaged views on public Shorts that appear in the Shorts Feed. The current help center eligibility information does not mention engaged views, but YouTube has made clear that is what they are counting.

"To count as a qualified shorts view, it has to be an engaged view. Meaning, someone didn't just see the first frame and swipe or cancel out, but actually watched for long enough for YouTube Analytics to count it as an engaged view. ... For an engaged view to count as a qualified view, it also has to be public ..."

It does not include:

Unlisted or private Shorts.
Deleted Shorts.
Ad campaigns.
Image Posts that appear in the Shorts feed.

Maintaining your YouTube Partner Program Status

There are new requirements to maintain your channel’s status in the YouTube Partner Program that will also go into effect on February 1, 2027.

Currently, your channel may become inactive if you have not uploaded new videos or posted new Posts for at least 6 months.

YouTube Partner Program Activity Requirements

The new activity requirements mean that starting February 1, one of the following must be met:

At least 1,000 qualified watch hours in the past 365 days OR
At least 1 Million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days OR
2 long-form videos or 5 Shorts uploaded every 90 days.

If your channel becomes inactive, you will have a 90 day window to meet the watch hour or Shorts views activity requirement.

The biggest change is that publishing Posts is no longer sufficient to keep your channel active. This was easy. Now, you will need to at least publish a Short every couple of weeks.

Shorts Minimum Performance Requirement

Currently, if your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program and earning from ad revenue sharing, your Shorts are eligible to earn from the Shorts Creator Pool. This is true even if your channel met the YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements with long-form video watch time.

Now you will only earn from the Shorts Creator Pool if your channel maintains 10 Million qualified Shorts views over the past 90 days.

This is one of the more painful changes. I get a few thousand Shorts views in that time frame, and they earn very little. It probably makes accounting sense to just not allocate those earnings. But there are channels that get 8 Million or 9 Million Shorts views over 90 days, and under the new policy they get no revenue from the Creator Pool at all because they haven’t met the performance requirement.

New Ways to Earn

Premium Lite

Premium Lite is a lower cost version of YouTube Premium. It includes mostly ad-free viewing (except on music videos), downloads and background play. Premium Lite will now be available in all countries where Premium is available.

Creators share revenue from the subscriptions.

For Premium Lite the pool is 60% of net subscription revenue.
For Premium the pool is 30% of net subscription revenue.

Revenue is distributed based on how many subscribers watch your videos.

YouTube says, “On average, creators earn more per user from Premium than from ads (based on 2026 performance).” And more Premium and Premium Lite subscribers means more potential revenue.

Shorts Incentive Programs

YouTube will be launching special programs for Shorts:

Bonuses for YouTube Shopping
Production credits for Brand deals
Earnings boosts for “cultural trend activations.”

There aren’t any details about these initiatives yet.

Direct Shorts Revenue

There is support for new Shorts ad formats that target specific channels. YouTube says:

“With these new ad formats, if an advertiser runs Shorts ads to specifically target 5 or fewer channels, creators will earn 45% of that ad's revenue in addition to regular earnings from the Shorts Creator pool.”

More Information

Blog post: New opportunities to earn and changes to the YouTube Partner Program (Watch the official video for an overview)

Announcement: Updates to the YouTube Partner Program - New earning opportunities & changes to eligibility

Detailed Information in the YouTube Help Center: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

Previous YouTube Partner Program Updates:

January 2018: Does your channel meet the new YouTube Partner Program Watchtime Requirements?
September 2022: New YouTube Monetization options in 2023
January 2023: YouTube Partners: Start earning from your YouTube Shorts
June 2023: YouTube Partner Program open to more creators with new fan funding tier

Creator Weekly: YouTube Live Practice Mode, X Original Content Rewards Program, AI Labeling Laws

2026-08-08T06:15:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube live streamers, TikTok creators, X posters, Adobe users and Bluesky and Reddit members.

And there’s more pushback on generative AI, including labeling laws in the EU and California, and Snapchat blocking AI-generated videos from recommendations. (I’m getting tired of AI news too, but that’s what’s happening.)

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Top Updates

New AI content labeling laws go into effect in the EU and California.
YouTube mobile live streaming has a new Practice Mode.
YouTube Shopping is now available in the UK.
X replaced its AI Revenue Sharing monetization program with a new Original Content Rewards Program.
Snapchat will no longer recommend wholly AI-generated videos in Spotlight (which kills monetization).
TikTok has a new partnership with Disney, which is great for Disney (including Marvel and Star Wars) content creators.
Reddit is putting old Reddit behind a login, added new AI mod tools, and is making it easier for posters to learn subreddit rules.
Bluesky improved trending topics and expanded group chats to 100 members.
Google Drive made it possible to leave time-stamped comments on videos. Great for collabs.
The new Adobe ChatGPT Plugin gives you access to the suite of Adobe editing tools.
Plus more for Twitch, Restream, StreamYard, website owners, Instagram, Discord, Buttondown, Pinterest

EU & California Require AI Labeling

New laws require AI companies to label and embed machine-readable metadata in realistic images and videos (deepfakes) indicating how the content was made. That would include whether the content was generated or edited using AI.

While the details differ, the EU Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content and the California Artificial Intelligence Transparency Act (CAITA) are in alignment, with both going into effect on August 2.

There are already standards for AI-generated content labeling, such as C2PA Content Credentials. And many companies already comply. The latest member of their steering committee is TikTok, joining Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Sony and other companies.

In the EU, the law also covers AI-generated text that is “published to inform the public on matters of public interest” that did not undergo human review. Most major companies with AI tools have already signed the WU AI code of practice. That includes Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

In California, this is just the first step. Starting in January 2027, large online platforms will have to let users get the details of AI-generated content on the platform itself. By 2028 all phones and cameras produced in California will have to store provenance information when an image is captured, allowing those images to be labeled as “real”.

It’s not clear what this will mean in practical terms.

Some popular AI tools, like Midjourney, apparently have not implemented the machine-readable labels. They could be subject to fines.

I expect to see clearer AI labels (the EU even has suggested icons) in social media and messaging apps. Already in response Google and YouTube have added tools for advertisers to label AI-generated ad creatives.

And I suspect that the race to comply could result in more mislabeled content. We shall see.

X Original Content Rewards Program

X launched a new monetization program, called the “Original Content Rewards Program” and winding down the current Revenue Sharing program.

Starting in April, X started making changes to encourage original posting, including reducing Revenue Sharing payouts for aggregator accounts, taking impressions from large accounts that reupload content and awarding those impressions to the original posters, and reducing the reach of accounts that just aggregate popular content.

As a user, this should hopefully mean more original content in your Home feed.

Earn from “qualified impressions” on “original content”.

Only impressions from Premium subscribers on the Home Timeline feed are counted. Impressions from Premium+ subscribers may be more valuable than from Basic subscribers.
An impression is counted when at least 50% of the post is visible (so it includes people quickly scrolling past).
Each account can generate one impression
It does not include paid, promoted, artificially generated or fraudulent impressions.
Original content can include commentary, reactions, analysis, original memes and transformation of content for humor.
Original content cannot be created or posted using automated means, be sexually explicit or harmful, be focused on monetization coaching, contain disinformation, have a helpful Community Note or violate other policies.

Eligibility requirements

Account in an eligible country, in good standing with no history of violating monetization or platform policies.
Subscribe to X Premium.
Have at least 500 “verified” followers.
Have at least 500,000 Home Timeline impressions on posts (not replies) from verified users in the past 90 days.
Post original content.
Current Revenue Sharing program members can apply for the Original Content Awards Program starting September 8th.

YouTube and Video

There is a new Practice Mode for vertical live streams in the YouTube app. You can use that to practice managing the stream, running polls, using the green screen and other features. When you are ready, you can then just tap a button to go live. Learn more.

The YouTube Shopping program is now available in the UK. Eligible channels can tag products from Wayfair, Currys, Debenhams, Boots, M&S, and Etsy. The YouTube Shopping affiliate program is available to most channels in the YouTube Partner Program in supported countries.

Snapchat will no longer recommend “wholly AI generated videos” on Spotlight. That kills monetization of such content, as Snapchat shares revenue from ads within a Spotlight. Of course, Snapchat has AI tools, and videos “enhanced or edited with Snapchat’s AI creative tools” are eligible for recommendation (with AI labels). This is part of a larger trend, with YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack, and other platforms trying to promote “human made” content, rather than low quality, repetitive AI slop.

TikTok has a new partnership with Disney. Curated Disney-centric fan-created content will appear in the Disney+ app. Creators will have access to Disney creative assets, including characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and more.

Twitch Alerts now work for mobile live streams. “Customize where they appear on screen, swap in a different set, or turn them off in Mobile IRL Alert Settings.”

If you connect your Restream account to Rumble, you can post clips there directly. Rumble is a video platform that’s popular on the far right.

StreamYard now lets you use details from a previous stream when you create a new stream. Perfect if you are streaming a series.

Web Publishing

Mark Williams-Cook writes: How cats.txt showed llms.txt evidence is GEO astrology (no, you don’t need a llms.txt file for AI to “understand” your website).

Social Media

Old Reddit, the user interface favored by mods, old-time users, admins, and apparently a lot of bad actors (spammers, scrapers, etc), will be limited to mods and logged-in users. There’s no target date for that, and they say that these changes will be happening over months and maybe more than a year. But to encourage everyone to stop using the old platform, there need to be changes, especially moving mods away from Automod (which uses keywords).

Rules Hub, “a new, intent-based moderation engine” has launched for new communities. It uses LLMs to determine if a post or comment matches the intent of a rule. Moderators can decide if a rule automatically removes the content, sends it to a mod queue or just logs it. There is a testing sandbox to make sure new rules work as expected and provides performance logs that help rules be refined.
Post and Comment Guidance helps redditors understand community guidelines before posting. This now can be based on the flair a user selects and allows automated guidance for top-level comments.
They want developers to use the official Reddit Developer Platform, rather than the Public Data API.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the platform would take down videos with harassing content and “obnoxious pranks” recorded using Meta glasses.

Bluesky will display enhanced preview cards of your Buttondown-hosted newsletter, showing the publication’s name, avatar and themed cover, rather than the usual title and snippet. This uses an AT Protocol standard, so presumably any site could implement this.

Bluesky group chats can now include up to 100 members.

Bluesky launched improvements to trending topics. It “catches more topics, identifies more posts within that topic, and serves them up faster.”

Discord has updated their look across mobile and desktop, with a new true dark mode, theme customization, new icons with people in circles and things in squircles, and cleaned-up chat bar.

The Pinterest Inclusion Fund is an incubator program that gives creators active on other platforms grants for content production, training and other resources. This year they are especially encouraging creators in 10 countries with content that “fuel’s the platform’s inclusive features”, like skin tone, hair and body type ranges.

Tools

It is now possible to leave timestamped comments on videos stored in Google Drive. Each timestamped comment is indicated with a marker on the video player timeline which you can jump to directly. This simplifies managing feedback.

There’s a new Adobe plugin for ChatGPT. This connects to the whole suite of Adobe tools, including Express, Photoshop, Firefly, Illustrator, Premiere and more. You can turn long-form video into vertical Shorts or Reels, apply updates across an entire set of photos, turn a spreadsheet into graphics or use templates. Signing in to your Adobe account lets you access your Creative Cloud files, save work across sessions and access more generative capabilities.

Thanks for reading! 🌼

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

2026-08-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

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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🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

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 🌼

Creator Weekly: Shorts Thumbnails, Substack AI Scans, Facebook Verified

2026-07-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube communities and Shorts, new tools at Substack and Facebook to show who’s human, new features for Instagram, X, Google Photos and more.

Before you read on, check your Google Account’s security and sign-in options. The best time to secure your account is now!

Google now lets you add a selfie video to help you sign into your account. If you have a single device (like your phone), set this up to make sure you can still sign in if your device is lost. Set it up at g.co/signin-selfie. Manage your selfie videos. Learn more.

OK, now read on!

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🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday.

This week’s Top Updates

Upload a custom thumbnail for your YouTube Shorts.
New YouTube Community features, including Community-only posts and quote posting.
For monetizing creators: YouTube is launching free Membership trials (you can opt out your channel) and shows Open Calls for brand deals.
Use Ask Studio to generate thumbnails in YouTube Studio.
Substack partnered with Pangram to let readers and creators scan for AI-generated content.
Facebook Verified is a free badge that shows you are human.
Facebook is showing users even more videos.
Instagram now lets you change the music on a published post.
X lets you add a custom thumbnail to videos.
Google Photos has redesigned and improved Ask Photos.
Plus updates for Meta AI, WordPress, Google Search, Patreon and more.

YouTube Shorts Custom Thumbnails

Channels in the YouTube Partner Program can now add custom thumbnails to Shorts in YouTube Studio on desktop.

You can upload a thumbnail, or use a frame selected by YouTube. This is the same as for long-form videos.
The option to select any frame and add text is still available in the YouTube app.
YouTube may only display thumbnails with a 2:3 aspect ratio. If your Short is 9:16, don’t have important details on the edges of the thumbnail.
Thumbnail A/B testing is not available for Shorts.
Shorts thumbnails do not display in the Shorts feed (that isn’t new).

New YouTube Community Features

YouTube is adding new Community features for creators and fans. Learn more.

For Creators:

Community-only posts that don’t appear on the Posts tab
More moderation options in YouTube Studio
Quick mod assignments from the 3 dot menu on a Community post in the main YouTube app.

For Fans:

Quote a creator post as a new post.
Access Communities from more places on YouTube
New notifications of creator interactions (like when they pin your post)

Substack scans for AI-generated content

Substack is partnering with Pangram, a tool that lets you scan notes, replies, comments, and posts, then estimates how much was written with AI assistance. It works on text longer than 100 words.”

This is currently available on the web and iOS (and Android soon).

In the long term, Substack is considering letting creators set Reply Rules around AI content, and let readers set their preferences about AI content recommendations.

Substack creators can also add a “how I made this statement” to their profile.

Substack explains why they added this feature:
“We care about this at Substack because it gets to the core of our mission to build an economic engine for culture. When content made by no one takes over parts of the internet that are supposed to be human, it pollutes the commons and makes it hard to discover and hear human voices.”

Substack authors have questions though. What if the AI scanner gets it wrong (and these tools frequently get it wrong)? And what will Pangram do with all the Substack writing it ingests?

Originally, Substack said users can use Pangram on draft posts, and “report and remove any scans on your own work that you believe are mistaken.

They later backtracked slightly, saying:

"We read all of your feedback, which we take seriously as we continue to evolve the product and host open conversation on this topic. Based on your comments, we made a change yesterday so that publishers can disable scanning on a post-by-post basis without having to scan the post first or interact with Pangram at all."

But that doesn’t address the potential issues around misidentification, and the feeling that this encourages writing in a “non AI” style. That is galling when the AI style is based on human writing in the first place.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is launching one month free Membership trials for eligible channels and “select qualified viewers”. Creators will not earn any revenue from the trial Membership, but the hope is that this encourages more people to become paid Members. Creators can opt out (or back in) on the Membership tab in YouTube Studio.

YouTube now shows Open Calls for Brand deals. This is designed to make it easy for Creators to start making Brand deals for the first time. How it works:

A Brand creates an open call for Shorts, and if your channel meets the criteria you will see them on the Earn tab in YouTube Studio.
You can see the deal terms, submit a Short, and if the Brand approves your video, you will get the offered payment. Brands can request one round of edits.
Brands can use your Short as an ad for 180 days, and can contact you directly to negotiate additional use.
This is currently available to YouTube Partners in the US, and will be available soon in the UK, India and Indonesia.

You can now use Ask Studio in YouTube Studio on desktop to generate thumbnails for long-form videos. Generated thumbnails are based on your title and video, and match the same style, topics and audience as the rest of your channel. You can brainstorm, then fine-tune the suggestions. You can start with a simple prompt “create a thumbnail for my video”.

If you use the AI creation tools in the YouTube Shorts editor, you can find your AI creations in the “Recent Creations” tab in the AI Playground.

Restream off-stream editing lets you edit any scene while your stream is live, without interrupting what’s on screen. This is still in testing, but will start rolling out soon. Watch the demo.

StreamYard now lets you see YouTube Gifts powered by Gems live. (Restream also has this feature). Gifts can be given by fans on vertical live streams if your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program in a supported country.

Discord no longer lets you set up a Discord role for TikTok LIVE subscribers. This let Creators offer a Discord server as a perk for paid TikTok LIVE subscriptions. Existing connections will remain active.

Web Publishing

New York Times: How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web
And Google’s response: Google: We Send Billions Of Clicks To Websites Weekly Through AI Search

WordPress shares how to find a local WordPress meetup or event.

Social Media

Facebook Verified is a new free badge that indicates a real human (but not which real human) is behind an account.

You record a selfie which is compared to your existing profile photos.
Badges appear in Marketplace, Dating, Groups and Profile, and will eventually be added to Feed posts.
This is available to users 18 and older, in good standing with the “fraud, scams and deceptive practices” Community Standards, and have not exhibited inauthentic behavior.
It is not available for Pages or personal profiles with Pro Mode.
This is separate from Meta Verified, a paid subscription that is supposed to provide impersonation protection and enhanced support.

Facebook wants to be TikTok? They are going to start testing Immersive Video internationally in “video-heavy countries” (it may come to the US next year). This is “a reimagined experience that puts a subset of people who we think want more video on Facebook into full-screen video the moment they open the app.” People can opt out, and Classic Feed will still be available.

Instagram now lets you change the audio on a post or carousel that you have already published (if you added the audio in the app). Your likes, comments and shares won’t be lost. Instagram notes this lets you “stay current” by swapping in trending songs.

X now lets you add a custom thumbnail to your videos. You can choose a frame and customize it or upload your own design. Currently only available for iOS.

Tools

Google Photos has redesigned Ask Photos. Previously Ask Photos was very slow related to classic search, and was often overkill if you just wanted to find photos of a specific person, place or thing (rather than a complex query). Now, if you enable Ask Photos, the app decides whether classic search would be better. You can toggle between classic and Ask results.

You can now create Combo charts in Google Sheets.

Meta AI can now “make plans, connect to email and calendar apps, create slides, and handle tasks on your behalf”. It uses Muse Spark to research and compile information or create a daily briefing. (I’m not sure why you would want this unless you are deep in the Meta ecosystem, but it’s there.)

Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Monetization Policy, Google Image Search, Beehiiv Communities

2026-07-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, did you celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17th 📆 🥳? Party with pictures!

This week there are updates for YouTube creators, Twitch, Google Image Search, beehiiv, Google Vids, Edits and more.

✉ Subscribe to the Creator Weekly newsletter to get updates by email.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

Top Updates

YouTube expanded its Inauthentic Content monetization policy description to provide more examples and more explicitly call out some AI-generated content.
Google Image Search turned 25 and is getting a Pinterest-like redesign, with easier access to Collections. Google is also adding AI image generation in Search AI Mode.
Beehiiv launched Communities where you can engage your subscribers.
YouTube is testing a redesigned “insights-first” YouTube Studio Analytics (renamed Insights).
YouTube shared a report highlighting their positive impact on the U.S. economy.
Twitch lets you create Clips by saying “Twitch, Clip That” during your livestream.
Google Vids now has Gemini Omni for video generation and selfie avatars.
You can now control the emotion and pacing of AI voiceovers and avatars in Google Vids.
Automating dubbing and lipsyncing in Instagram Reels is expanding to more languages. Plus caption translation.
The Edits video editing app lets you import your own fonts.
TikTok is launching an AI literacy project.
Tumblr lets you recover a deleted account for up to 30 days.
Patreon is blocking AI training crawlers from posts.
Facebook no longer lets you create multiple personal profiles.
X is boosting visibility of your posts to mutuals.
Flickr will start removing inactive accounts in August.
NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook.
Plus updates for Spotify, Gmail, LinkedIn, Restream and more.

YouTube Updates Monetization Policy

YouTube updated its Inauthentic Content monetization policy, splitting it into 3 types, with additional examples. I’ve written up a detailed overview, but these are the basics.

You are not allowed to monetize:

Generic or Repetitive Content: Multiple videos minimal variation, mass-produced appearance, and generic templates.
Unsatisfying or Offputting Content: Videos that rely on shock value without a narrative for views. It includes fake (but realistic-looking) visuals of fake news, like a celebrity death.
AI Personas for Sensitive Topics: AI-generated personas giving information or advice on health, legal issues, finances or politics.

While it’s not all about AI-generated content, it definitely has that in mind as a common tool used to generate masses of generic content.

YouTube's VP of Trust & Safety Matt Halprin noted that this is not a change in monetization policy. The policy just has more examples now, which should hopefully be more transparent.

Helprin shares more details about the inauthentic content monetization policy in a video with Creator Insider. They had some AI fun.

New Look for Google Image Search

Google Image Search is 25 years old with a couple new features.

Google Image Search is turning more Pinterest-like with "dynamic, immersive gallery of images ... updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests." Your Collections appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to add images and switch between a Collection and the search results. The bad news for creators is that it appears image source details are less visible. This will be available in the US, in English.

Google is also adding image generation with Nana Banana to AI Overviews in Search. That will be available in regions that support image generation in AI Mode.

It will be interesting to see if these changes have an effect on Search traffic to sites with many indexed images.

Communities in beehiiv

Beehiiv started as a newsletter platform. Over time more features have been added that keep your audience on the platform (or, to look at it another way, meet your audience where they already are). This includes tools to build your website and host your podcast.

This week beehiiv had their big “Summer Release” event, and the big announcement was Communities. Instead of creating a community on Discord or another 3rd party platform, this lets you and your subscribers engage where they already have an account.

Available for all paid plans.
Set your community to free or limit to paying members.
You can sync your newsletter posts and podcasts to give people something to talk about.
Customize the look to match your beehiiv website and newsletter.
Members can post text, images and audio (video coming soon).
Members can comment, react, reply and repost, as you would expect in a Community.
Create custom channels for specific topics. (Similar to Discord and Slack.)
Each member has their own profile, and you can follow specific profiles.
Communicate privately with direct messages or group chats.
Includes moderation tools and analytics.

If your audience is primarily through beehiiv, this could be a good way to build a community around your content and brand. But communities aren’t portable. Even if you could export the contents, there is nowhere to import them.

Also, if you have a significant audience that’s on YouTube or Instagram or that listens to your Podcast on Spotify or elsewhere, this probably isn’t the best option. Beehiiv also offers Discord integration, where you could also have your YouTube Members or other subscribers and fans.

Also announced:

Copilot, beehiiv’s in-app AI agent. It can give you performance insights or build automations.
Native podcast hosting on all plans.
Rebuilt visual editor for your newsletter, including real-time collaborative editing.
Programmatic ads. Insert an ad block into your newsletter and beehiiv will fill the slot with the “most relevant, highest-paying opportunity for your audience.”
Improvements to podcast hosting, digital product selling, the website builder, and paid subscriptions.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is testing a “streamlined insights-first experience” in YouTube Studio. If you are in the test group, send feedback!

Analytics renamed Insights
Updated user interface, grouping related metrics and charts
Click any chart or metric to open Advanced Mode
Simplified date ranges, custom date ranges only in Advanced Mode
AI Insight Cards: Channel summary, Content patterns, Audience loyalty, Video summary
Trends tab turning into Research tab
Saved Keywords retired (you can export yours as a CSV file or access in Studio Mobile)

YouTube shared their 2025 U.S. Impact Report. This is meant to show how awesome YouTube is for the U.S. economy, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt. But this is what they say the numbers are:

YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed $60 billion to the U.S. GDP and supported more than 540,000 “full-time equivalent” jobs (including hiring editors, renting studio space, and buying from local suppliers).
All 50 states have at least 10 channels with over 1 million monthly views.
76% of small and medium-sized businesses with a YouTube channel, say YouTube helped them grow their customer base.
77% of creators who say they have a media or entertainment career started that career on YouTube
67% of viewers discuss a YouTube video with a friend or family on a monthly basis.
94% of teachers who use YouTube use YouTube content directly in lessons or assignments.

YouTube’s Creator Insider channel has tips for using Shorts to grow your long form video audience. The tl;dw version:

Add a related video to your Short.
Use a verbal call to action, telling people why they should click the related video.
Reward the click immediately, by making sure your long form video dives right into the content.
Use vertical live streams.

Twitch now lets you create Clips with just your voice. Say “Twitch, Clip That” while you are live and Twitch creates the clip for you. This is rolling out in English for Partners and Affiliates. You can turn this on or off in your stream Clip Settings. Created Clips appear in your Clip Manager. Learn more.

Restream now lets you create additional clips from a project you have already processed for clips. Clips can be specific selections or AI-selected. Creating Clips require a paid subscription.

Gemini Omni is now available in Google Vids. This means higher quality video generation, edit videos by typing changes, or create a personal selfie avatar to insert into your movies. (Selfie avatars are also available in the YouTube Shorts editor and in the Gemini app.) These new features are available to consumer accounts with a Gemini Pro or Ultra subscription and select Workspace editions. This is not available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or UK.

If you are using Google Vids AI Avatars or AI Voiceovers, you can now customize the pacing and emotional delivery (like [amused] or [confusion]). Plus you can add sound effects. This is available to all users with personal Google Accounts.

Instagram and Facebook expanded Reels dubbing (with lip syncing) to more languages. And you can translate your captions and voice together.

The Edits video editing app now lets you import your own fonts, generate styleable lyrics from selected music, and video effects search.

TikTok is launching an AI literacy project. As part of that, they are joining the C2PA Steering Committee. They say they have labeled over 3 billion videos as AI-generated content using C2PA Content Credentials (which they implemented 2 years ago), creator labeling tools and their own invisible watermarking technology.

LinkedIn shared video best practices: don’t wait too long to get to the point, don’t assume everyone is listening (use captions), and don’t rely on a single shot (add variety to your visuals).

Web Publishing and Search

Useful information if Google Search Console isn’t indexing your website: Google On Discovered vs Crawled Not Indexed Quality Issues & AI-Generated Content

Tumblr now lets you recover deleted accounts for up to 30 days. Previously deletion was immediate and permanent. Note that deleted individual sideblogs, rather than entire accounts, cannot be recovered.

You can now connect your apps to AI Mode in Search, just like you can in Gemini. Currently available apps include Instacart, Canva, and YouTube Music.

Social Media

Patreon has partnered with Cloudflare to block AI training crawlers from published posts.

Facebook launched the option to create multiple personal profiles in 2023. The idea was to have the ability to separate your interests and audiences. Apparently it did not catch on. It is now no longer possible to create new profiles. Existing profiles are not affected. (Thanks for the tip Diego!)

Threads now lets you add a flair when composing a community post.

X tweaked their algorithm to boost visibility of your posts to mutuals (people you follow, who follow you back). They expect that this should increase replies to your posts from people you care about and “help clusters form around interests more easily”.

Tools

The latest version of Snapseed, Google’s pro image editing app, has expanded RAW file support.

Flickr is going to remove inactive accounts starting 30 days after July 15th. Inactive accounts are free accounts with no photos, no comments, no favorites or other activity for at least 90 days. To keep your account active, all you need to do is sign in before August 31st.

NotebookLM has been renamed Gemini Notebook. Google says it will soon be enabled in AI Mode in Search.

Eligible users can now “Talk to Spotify” (beta) to get more information about what you are listening to or revisit your listening history. It’s not only for music. While listening to a podcast or audio book you can ask about the story, author or participants (“What other podcasts has this guest been on?”). This is rolling out to 18+ Premium subscribers in the US, Ireland and Sweden.

Gmail now lets you customize how you want your writing refined. Previously you could choose a pre-set like Polish, Formalize or Shorten.

There’s a new Google Noto font with 3D emoji. They are offered as open source raw .OBJ files that you can do with what you will.

Thanks for reading 🌼

YouTube Clarifies Inauthentic Content Monetization Policy

2026-07-16T12:21:26.016-07:00

This week YouTube renamed the Inauthentic Content monetization policy Generic or Repetitive Content. They added two new categories of content that violate monetization policies: Unsatisfying or Offputting Content and AI Personas Related to Sensitive Topics.

In July 2025 YouTube renamed the Repetitious Content monetization policy Inauthentic Content. This was not a policy change. Instead the update was meant to "clarify that this policy includes content that is mass-produced or repetitive", including new examples. At the time it seemed pretty clear that this was addressing the masses of low-quality AI slop flooding the platform.

This update is a similar clarification.

Note that this does not affect the Reused Content policy.

Are these new monetization policies?

YouTube says explicitly that this is NOT a policy change. Instead this is meant to be a better explanation of current policy.

They also make clear that the policies do not only apply to AI-generated content. It doesn't matter how you create your content, as long as the policies are followed.

This seems like a timely update. Creators who lose monetization often seem to focus on how "unfair" YouTube is, without carefully reading and understanding the policies. Having monetization policies explained in greater detail should hopefully make the system more transparent.

What is "Generic or Repetitive Content"?

The YouTube Help Center has a detailed explanation of the monetization policies, with examples. This is the quick overview.

The main Inauthentic Content policy has been renamed Generic or Repetitive Content.

Generic or repetitive content includes content that looks like it’s made with a template, or that may feel repetitive to viewers after watching several videos in a row from the same channel.

Examples of what violates this policy

What is not allowed to be monetized:

Content with "minimal variation across videos".
Image slideshows or scrolling text without additional value.
Content that appears mass produced, with "generic or unoriginal templates".
The same storyline template across multiple videos.

Context matters! Videos are expected to have educational value, commentary, narrative, and original insights or perspective.

You are allowed to use the same intro and outro, as long as the main content varies from video to video. You are also allowed to have a series that includes the same characters or type of content (like product reviews).

What is "Unsatisfying or Offputting Content"?

Unsatisfying or Offputting Content is "content that relies heavily on emotionally manipulative formulas, mimics existing formats or stories to a degree that the videos feel interchangeable, or appears designed to shock or surprise viewers for the sole purpose of getting views."

Examples of what violates this policy

A brief overview of examples that illustrate what is not allowed to be monetized:

Repeatedly using themes of violence or loss without building a narrative.
Relying on shock value to get views.
Repetitive scenarios of animals in peril, especially relying on generic templates.
Unrelated clips stitched together to shock or surprise viewers.
Realistic-looking, but fake, visuals of a celebrity death or natural disaster that tricks viewers.

Your content should have a cohesive storyline, show your authentic perspective, and express your unique creativity.

How is this applied? The first I noticed this update was a Reddit complaint that a channel was demonetized for "Unsatisfying or Off-Putting Content". The channel content is just videos destroying vacuum cleaners, fans and other appliances.

This policy overlaps with the Advertiser Friendly Content Guidelines, which already prohibit shocking content.

You Cannot Monetize AI Personas Related to Sensitive Topics

AI Image generated with Nano Banana. Prompt: generate a realistic looking medical doctor, lawyer and financial analyst. It should be a group of head and shoulders only.

YouTube's monetization policy explicitly prohibits videos with an AI-generated "expert" that provides advice on what YouTube considers "sensitive topics".

This includes topics that could have serious personal impact:

Health
Legal issues
Finances
Politics

The policy does not appear to be limited to realistic looking AI-generated personas. YouTube does not mention any exceptions for cartoon personas.

Can AI-Generated Content Be Monetized?

You are allowed to use generative AI tools to create monetizable videos. YouTube even offers AI tools in the Shorts Editor, YouTube Create app, and YouTube Studio.

As long as your videos comply with YouTube's monetization policies, the way your video is made should not matter.

How can AI be used?

You can monetize videos where you used AI to help create something original.

Visualize a unique character
Create unique background visuals
Edit videos scripts

And pretty much all video editing software has AI-powered tools for improving your audio, lighting or adding effects.

The YouTube also requires disclosure of realistic AI-generated or meaningfully altered content. YouTube recently added automatic AI detection and clearer AI content labels, but you are still expected to manually disclose realistic AI use.

What can you do if monetization is disabled on your YouTube channel?

If your monetization is disabled for Community Guidelines violations, visit the Earn tab in YouTube Studio for more details.

You have 21 days to submit an appeal. Before you appeal, carefully read the monetization policies, and honestly evaluate your content for compliance. Even if YouTube got it wrong, there was likely something on your channel that appeared to be a policy violation. Understanding that can help your appeal.

If you do not appeal, or your appeal is unsuccessful, you can reapply for the YouTube Partner Program after 90 days. That gives you time to edit or delete videos that violate monetization policy, and upload new videos.

More information

Creator Insider: YouTube's VP of Trust & Safety on YouTube's Inauthentic Content Policy
YouTube Help Center: YouTube channel monetization policies
YouTube Help Center: What to do if your YouTube monetization is disabled
YouTube Help Center: Disclosing the use of Generative AI content.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shows, Meta Muse Image Backlash, Search Console social profiles

2026-07-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week YouTube expanded access to Shows, a new Meta AI tool caused backlash, Google Search Console will track your social media performance in search, and more.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on YouTube.

Top Updates

YouTube Shows are available to all channels in the YouTube Partner Program.
YouTube Creator Music in YouTube Studio will no longer offer paid licenses. Music will either be free or offer revenue sharing
Ask YouTube searchbot is now available on desktop. YouTube shared tips for creators to have their content appear there.
The Meta Muse Image model launched with the option to prompt with any public Instagram profile. After backlash that was removed. You can still edit your own images, generate new images or use new AI effects for Instagram Stories.
X launched a new Video Editor and Recorder in the iOS app.
Google Search Console lets you see how your social posts on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube are performing in the search results.
Substack newsletter authors can now offer paid digital perks. And you can import your podcast hosted elsewhere into your account. Plus a bunch of other new features.
Bluesky has improved search results and filters.
Threads lets you set your Likes to private.
Reddit blocks 23 million spam views per day with automated systems.
If you want to read AI-generated articles, apparently LinkedIn is the place to be.
Google Photos added Video Remix to the Create tab. It uses Gemini Omni to change your background, add effects or transform into art styles.

Shows for all YouTube Partners

YouTube Shows are now available to all Creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Shows are a specialized playlist, similar to Podcasts. Learn more.

You can convert an existing playlist, or create a new one.
A Show has seasons that are split into episodes that are either “serial” (meant to be watched in order, listed oldest to newest) or “non-serial” (watched in any order, listed newest to oldest).
A Show has a Show Page with texted poster art (with your stylized title or logo) and optional backdrop as part of your channel. This is eligible for inclusion in Recommended Shows and the Continue Watching shelf on the YouTube homepage.
YouTube recommends a Show have a consistent story or topic, consistent look or feel (intro, thumbnail style, video format), and high quality video and sound.

YouTube Removing Creator Music Paid License Option

YouTube launched Creator Music in 2022, with the promise of “affordable, high-quality music licenses that offer … full monetizing potential”. It launched in beta in the U.S., with the promise of expansion to more creators.

It’s four years later and Creator Music is still in beta, and still only available to channels in the YouTube Partner Program in the U.S.

Now YouTube is phasing out paid licenses in Creator Music on August 10. I wouldn’t be surprised if very few creators actually licensed songs, which can be expensive (hundreds or thousands of dollars). And even if you pay for a license, the terms often limit the license duration. So you would have the expense of the license, but only be able to use the song for, say, 2 years. Not a great deal.

Creator Music will instead focus on free tracks, and tracks that allow revenue sharing.

Existing paid licenses will remain valid until expiration. Unused licenses will be automatically refunded.

Meta Muse Image Backlash

Meta released the Muse Image image generation model. Meta says “it uses advanced reasoning to understand complex prompts, seamlessly blending multiple photos into high-quality creations”. It’s available in Meta AI and powers Instagram Stories effects, and will be coming soon to Facebook, Messenger and tools for advertisers.

There was immediately a backlash. One of the new Muse Image features in Meta AI is the ability to prompt new images by @-mentioning any public Instagram account. Instagram said this would be great for “playful edits between friends.” But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day can imagine how this could be abused by prompting with the profiles of celebrities, people you dislike, or just random profiles for the lulz.

You could opt out your Instagram account, but you would have to find the buried settings. Most people likely didn’t realize that they were opted in by default.

I doubt Meta cares about what I think or what the typical low-follower-account Instagram user thinks. But they do care what Hollywood thinks. There was also pushback from organizations like SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and agencies representing megastars. I’m guessing that got Meta’s attention.

Three days after the feature was announced, it was removed. Meta said they “heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

How can you try Muse Image?

In Meta AI you can edit your photos (use suggested prompts for inspiration), create detailed infographics (with legible text), or generate an entirely new image. Muse Image uses Muse Spark to understand your prompt, taking “multiple steps behind the scenes — planning its layout, looking up real-time web context, and intelligently blending multiple visual references at once.”
Instagram has added more than 30 new AI-powered effects (U.S. only). Some of the effects are meant to be subtle, making changes like enhancing the lighting in an image.

YouTube and Video

YouTube Gifts for vertical live streams launched in 45 new countries, including Japan, India and the UK.

The Ask YouTube conversational search bot is now available in the US on desktop. Ask about planning a trip, learning a new skill, comparing products, or about video content. Responses may include clips from long form videos, Shorts and text. Learn more.
What does this mean for Creators? YouTube says:

This is “an additional path for viewers to discover your channel and drives highly engaged users to your content.”
Views within Ask YouTube count towards YouTube Partner Program eligibility and total view count. (But the views aren’t monetized)
If you want your videos to appear in Ask YouTube use descriptive titles, add clear video chapters, and, of course, create high quality content.

YouTube suggests using interactive stickers (poll, quiz, Q&A) on your Shorts to build your audience and community.

X launched a new Video Editor and Recorder in the X iOS app. Features include customizable overlay captions and green screen. The goal is to encourage more original content uploaded directly to the platform.

StreamYard now lets the livestream host allow guests to have access to slide controls.

Web Publishing

Last week Cloudflare announced new filters for AI bots. I noted that if you use Cloudflare you need to check your settings to be sure you aren’t blocking the Googlebot or Bingbot. AdWeek reports that some publishers are considering intentionally blocking the Google crawler. Why do that? As search traffic disappears, publication content appears in the AI Search Overviews, which only benefits Google.

Google Search Console added Platform Properties, a new property type that lets you see how your social platforms (including Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube) are doing in Search. Run a Performance Report to see clicks, impressions and which posts and queries are driving traffic. There’s also an Insights Report with an overview and Achievements. This will become available over the next few weeks.
To add your social profiles:

Open Search Console.
Open the Welcome page (https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome) or click your current list of Properties and choose + Add Property.
Choose your platform and verify the connection.

Substack announced a number of new features:

Paid subscriber “Perks”: In addition to subscriber-only content, you can offer downloadable files, invites to live sessions or other perks.
Save Notes: You can save Notes in the Substack app for Android or iOS.
Scheduled Chats: Schedule a new Chat thread to engage with fans.
Polls in Substack Notes or Posts.
Text formatting: Superscript and subscript, text and highlight colors
Redesigned Podcast and Video Player: Subscribers can adjust playback speed, listen offline or turn on a sleep timer.
Podcast distribution support: Any podcast hosted elsewhere with an RSS feed can be distributed on Substack.
Filter subscriber questions: Live video Q&A can have chat filtered to only show questions.
Reorganized video settings: Podcast controls, clipping, transcripts, auto-publish to YouTube all in one place.
Improved Clipping: Full-screen viewing, control captions and layout.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) support: Integrate with Claude, ChatGPT and other AI to ask about performance, subscribers, engagement and other analytics. (Available to bestsellers only)

Beehiiv has added Linktree integration, which lets people subscribe to your newsletter directly from your Linktree “link in bio” page.

Social Media

Bluesky has improved search with more relevant results and filters for keywords, date range, language and more.

Threads now lets you set your Likes to Private. That way only you and the person who posted the liked post will see the Like.

Reddit shared their improvements in fighting spam. Their automated systems block more than 23 million spam views per day and revoke about 2 million inauthentic votes per day. They are also expanding automated enforcement of harmful content (in English) like hate, harassment, and violent threats.

A recent study by Pangram suggests LinkedIn is the “most AI-saturated platform” with more than 40% of long form posts likely fully AI-generated (comments are also frequently AI-generated). And nearly half of article posts on X appear to be at least partially AI written. Of the platforms they reviewed, Substack has the most human-written AI content, with only 10% of articles fully AI-written.

LinkedIn shared tips for increasing your reach, including regular posting, engaging with comments, framing your post as a question and answer, and aiming for between 200 and 300 words. There are more tips in the article. No, it doesn’t say to plug all that into AI, but that’s probably what people do.

Tools

Google Photos has added Video Remix to the Create Tab. Use Gemini Omni to transform videos into shareable video clips. Learn more. (It weirds me out that the announcement calls this "making memories". It's not doing that! It's turning video of actual moments into a fantasy.)

Background replacement, relighting effects, art styles (watercolor, sketchbook, oil painting effects)
Requires AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription.
Available in 14 countries, including the US, India, and other select countries in South America, Asia and the Middle East. See the list.
Must be 18+
Videos must be backed up, and 9:16 or 16:9 (otherwise they will be center cropped). Learn more.
Your original video must be under 60 seconds long, and you can remix a 1 to 10 second clip.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Image Post Music, Edits Bilingual Captions, X Live Studio

2026-07-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

Summer is in full swing, and I hope you are keeping cool! This is a holiday week, with just a few updates including news from YouTube, Meta, Substack and X.

🌐 Subscribe to the Creator Weekly Newsletter to get posts in your Inbox every Saturday.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday to discuss this week’s updates.

Tip of the week: Use the Google Vids Screen Recorder extension to record both your screen and yourself. Captured video can be edited in Google Vids (which is free for everyone). It’s great for creating tutorials. Check out my video to see the results.

Top Updates

Celebrate the US’s 250th birthday with silly YouTube Shorts effects, historical images, American music and live streamed celebrations.
Add licensed popular music to your YouTube image posts to make them more engaging if they appear in the Shorts feed.
Gemini Omni is available to generate clips in the YouTube Shorts editor and YouTube Create app. And you can use a selfie Avatar.
YouTube shared tips for creating Shorts and using Ask Studio.
Edits video editing app can auto-generate bilingual captions, and add overlays to templates.
Meta Glasses have new Instagram Stories video and editing features.
X launched Live Studio (beta) for live stream management.
Substack posts include automatic translation and country-specific leaderboards.
AdSense ad intents may now show Gemini generated content in addition to display ads.
Cloudflare can filter AI bot traffic by type (Search, Training, and Agents). Check your default settings!
Social media GIFs aren’t quite the same, as Google kills the Tenor API.
Threads live chat can have co-hosts and lets you easily share to our feed.
There are updates for Apple Creator Studio, Gemini with Google Photos and Slides,

The US at 250 🇺🇸🎆

The United States Declaration of Independence was adopted 250 years ago today, on July 4, 1776.

YouTube suggests posting content around the 4th of July and “you could be featured on the YouTube homepage.” There are also new Shorts effects: Fireworks, Food Ranker and Coloring Book.

If you search for America 250 content on YouTube in the US, you’ll see featured content on a dedicated shelf.

C-SPAN has partnered with YouTube to broadcast America 250 celebrations on YouTube TV and livestream on YouTube. Watch C-SPAN.

Google Arts & Culture has Making of a Nation: America at 250, celebrating the history of the American Revolution with objects and documents from top museums and archives.

Spotify gave an overview of American music artists and creators.

Flickr shared American historical images from museums and archives on the platform.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has expanded the music options for image Posts. Image posts can appear in the Shorts feed on mobile devices, giving them more visibility. You can add up to 15 seconds of audio, choosing from the royalty-free tracks in the YouTube Audio library, licensed and popular music, or AI-generated Dream Tracks. Music and text overlays can be added when creating a Post in the YouTube mobile app. Posts show in the Shorts feed will count as Views in Analytics.

Back in May, YouTube added the Gemini Omni video model to YouTube Shorts Remix. Now it’s available for the “Create Video” option in the YouTube Shorts editor and YouTube Create app. Generate videos up to 10 seconds, using up to 3 reference images. You may even be able to use an Avatar version of yourself.

Five tips to inspire your first YouTube Short.

There’s an official guide on how to get started with Ask Studio in YouTube Studio.

The Edits app now lets you easily add automatically-generated bilingual captions, in English, Indonesian, Russian, Portuguese, Gujarati, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Bengali, German, Italian, Thai, French, Japanese, and Kannada. Also new: lock the position of clips in templates and new summer sound effects.

There are new Instagram Stories video creation features for Meta Glasses, including immersive Spin View (viewers can rotate their phone to see the full perspective), Multi-Cam syncing of your glasses and phone cameras in Stories, and the option to adjust playback speed, reframe the action, and balance the audio.

If you use StreamYard for multi-aspect-ratio streams (or dual format streaming), you can now create separate portrait and landscape layouts.

X introduced Live Studio in beta (x.com/i/live-studio). This is a livestreaming dashboard that is part of their Creator Studio suite of tools. It makes it easy to schedule or start live streams, live chat controls, real-time analytics and the option to download completed streams.Access requires an X Premium subscription. Learn more.

Web Publishing

If you have AdSense ad intents ads on your website, users that interact with a link, anchor or chip may see related Gemini-generated content, in addition to display ads. AdSense says, “This not only drives additional revenue for you when users click on ads, but also keeps users engaged with your page through related Gemini-generated content.”

Readers can now translate Substack posts from English into 15 different languages, and from 100 languages into English. They have also added new country leaderboards in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and UK.

If you use Cloudflare to protect your website (including on their free tier), there are now more granular options for managing AI traffic. You can now separately control access to AI bots for Search, Training and Agents. Starting September 15, the default settings will block Training and Agent on pages that display ads (which implies a human visitor goal), while Search is allowed. Warning: enforcement uses the most restrictive applicable rules, which means multi-purpose crawlers (Googlebot, Applebot, BingBot) are included if you block Training.

From SEO Roundtable: Google's Head Of Search - Liz Reid: We Want Great Content To Shine.

Social Media

Why are GIFs on social media different now? On June 30, Google killed Tenor API access for 3rd party developers. Tenor is a GIF database, sort of like Giphy. If you use GBoard, Google Chat or Google Messages and have inserted a GIF, that is Tenor. Google had an API that let developers use that functionality in their own apps for free. It was used by many platforms, including Discord, X, Bluesky, and WhatsApp. Many platforms have switched to Klipy, which has a different selection of GIFs, which may mean your fave is missing. (Tenor is still in use on Google properties.)

Instagram published a complete guide to Instagram stories. Everything you need to know.

Threads community live chat has new features, including up to 3 co-hosts, community champions as hosts, an easy way to share messages from live chat to your feed, and translations. The live chats are public “real time” discussions, available inside communities on mobile. They are working on the desktop version.

X has said they want to better reward original creators, penalizing creators that simply aggregate popular content. Head of Product Nikita Bier announced this week that an experiment “removing the Top-30 highest paid revenue share accounts [using the old payment formula] from the For You timeline increased both time spent and daily active users on X.” All these accounts posted a high volume of copied content. Those 30 accounts supposedly have had their revenue cut “up to 99%” since then. It’s not clear to me if the issue is the volume of posting, or what they post (often engagement or rage bait) or both.

Tools

Apple Creator Studio, the recently-announced creative app bundle for Apple devices, has new features. This includes new AI tools and integration of Pixelmator Pro, across Final Cut Pro, Keynote, and other apps, and new music tools for Logic Pro. Find out about all the updates here.

Gemini now lets you connect Personal Intelligence with Nano Banana and Google Photos.This lets Gemini generate “deeply personalized” images, based on your “taste and lifestyle.” This is available to eligible users in the US.

You can create a full presentation with Gemini in Google Slides. Previously you could only create one slide at a time. Ground the information in your Google Drive files and match the style of another presentation. The generated slides are fully editable. This is currently only supported for English. This is available for personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and select Workspace editions.

The Google Drive mobile app now has access to AI Overviews and Ask Gemini. This is available for personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and select Workspace editions.

If you are a WhatsApp user, you can now reserve a username. The username lets you communicate with people without revealing your phone number. Creators and small business have the option to claim their existing Instagram or Facebook username on WhatsApp.

Getty Images will likely terminate its merger agreement with Shutterstock. This is likely due to concerns from UK regulators. The stock image platforms announced their planned merger in January 2025, so this has been ongoing for over a year.

Interesting Reading

Talking Points Memo: TikTok Doesn’t Want Us To Talk About the News

Prospect Magazine: Life at the end of the metaverse

SEO Roundtable: Fraudulent DMCA Takedowns Wreak Havoc In Google Search

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Player, Instagram for TV, Facebook Creator Studio

2026-06-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, especially friends in Europe, I hope you are staying cool. There is no summer vacation for creator updates!

This week there are updates for YouTube Shorts and Instagram viewers, YouTube and Facebook creators, website owners and more.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly in your email inbox every Saturday.

🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts player redesign with 2x speed, hearts replacing likes and Clear Screen mode. The dislike button is gone.
YouTube Studio Content tab redesign with Notices, Visibility, and Estimated Revenue.
YouTube Studio app Account Status page gives an overview of any critical channel issues.
YouTube Studio has new AI-powered comment filters that let you search by general topic or mood. You can also find similar comments.
Instagram for TV expanded to more devices and has more features for Reels viewing.
Twitch users can export Clips directly to Snapchat.
Restream can now connect to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to manage your streams.
Google Search Generative AI Reports are available to more website owners.
Google Search released the June 2026 Spam update.
Beehiiv partnered with Cloudflare to let you control AI crawler access to your site, lets you offer Group Subscriptions to your newsletter, and has a new partnership with Spotify to let podcast subscribers access your content in both places.
WordPress(dot)com has an experimental Feature Clip tool to turn posts into vertical videos.
Blog on Offprint, Leaflet or pckt.blog, which are built on AT Protocol, to federate with Bluesky. Bluesky offers a discount on Pro plans.
Cannes Lions 2026 saw big platforms, brands, and advertisers gather to celebrate ads. Google and YouTube, TikTok, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Snap, LinkedIn and Pinterest announced new ways for Brands and Creators to connect (plus ad design tools). Most interesting? Collab posts on LinkedIn.
Facebook is bringing back the Facebook Creator Studio app with AI powered insights, brainstorming, and comments. Plus a new Creator Dashboard.
Plus new Gemini features and more.

YouTube Shorts Player Redesign

YouTube Shorts player in the YouTube app is getting a makeover. Learn more.

The new Clear Screen mode temporarily hides icons and other overlays.
You can play Shorts at 2x speed by pressing the side of the screen. You can then pull down to lock the speed at 2x for that Short.
It’s easier to mute the audio by tapping the screen to pause, then tapping the mute icon.
A heart ❤️ replaces the like 👍 button
The dislike👎 button is gone. Use the “Not Interested” and “Don't Recommend This Channel” options in the menu instead. You can see historical Dislikes stats for your Shorts in YouTube Studio Analytics.

These changes only affect the Shorts player, so you won’t see changes for long form videos or live streams.

YouTube Studio Content Tab Updates

YouTube updated the Content tab in YouTube Studio, better organizing the most important information about video status . (Watch a brief video overview or learn more about the Content tab).

Notices

The Notices column shows any warnings about your content, including policy and copyright issues. There are icons if there is an alert. Hover over the icon to see a card explaining the limitations, or in the mobile app, tap on the icon.

A dash (-) means no current restrictions
A black (i) in a circle is an informational notice, with info that does not currently affect your content. That can include copyright claims on content before you monetize, or that your video has licensed music.
A yellow i in a circle means a partial limitation. It includes age restriction, limited ad earnings, comments disabled or other issues that limit your content’s reach, earnings or feature access.
A red X means a complete limitation, including blocked, removed, locked as private or ineligible to earn revenue.
A stack of lines with a checkmark means that YouTube is still running system checks.

This replaces the green and yellow monetization icons, which focused on suitability to run ads. The new Notice icons give more detailed information about any issues.

Visibility

The Content tab also includes a clearer Visibility column (Public, Private, Members Only, Unlisted, greyed out if YouTube has placed this on your video). This is the visibility you have set. Any limitations, like copyright descriptions, are now in the Notices column.

Earnings

There is also a new Estimated Revenue column (with numbers that take about 2 days to process). This includes earnings from ads, Shopping, YouTube Premium and fan funding.

The Likes/Dislikes ration was removed

The Likes/Dislikes ratio was removed. Information about Dislikes can still be found in Analytics for individual videos on the Engagement tab. You can also use Ask Studio to just ask about likes and dislikes on a video.

Instagram for TV

Instagram for TV is getting new features. It launched small in December 2025, when it was made available for the Amazon Fire TV. It expanded to Google TV in February. This week it’s available for Samsung TVs (2020 or newer) in the US, with new features that are supposed to make it better to watch together with your friends.

Channels based on your interests, with shelves of Reels organized For You, Popular with Friends, and From People You Follow
Cast from your phone (including your Instagram Saved tab) to Google TV and Fire TV.
Stories along the top of the player (just like the web).
Horizontal video shelf.
Also being explored (but not available yet) are more creator-friendly formats: longer-form video, episodic series, live on TV.

Instagram’s VP of Product Tessa Lyons says she hopes that by the end of the year “creators really see Instagram as a place for long-form content”, which would (literally) play nicely on TVs.

Web Publishers

Google Search Generative AI Reports in Search Console show how your site is viewed in Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI features in Discover. It launched in the first week of June to select website owners in the UK. This week it started rolling out to more sites in more countries.

Google Search released the June 2026 Spam Update. Google says this is a “normal spam update”

Google Search Console has a new Verification FAQ that should answer your questions about verifying your website in Console.

Beehiiv has a new partnership with Cloudflare, which lets you see how AI crawlers access your web content and decide which services get access. This is available to all beehiiv publishers with a connected custom domain.

Beehiiv now lets you offer Group Subscriptions. The purchaser becomes an account admin, and can distribute the newsletter to individuals in their organization

If you host your podcast on beehiiv, you can now sell premium podcast subscriptions through beehiiv, and give subscribers access to the content on Spotify.

WordPress(dot)com (not to be confused with the free open source WordPress content management system) launched a new experimental Feature Clip tool that uses AI to generates a vertical video from a post. The video is 9:16, 8 seconds long, 720p and can be downloaded as a MP4 file. You can generate 10 clips per site every 24 hours.This is available for Premium, Business and Commerce plans.

If you use WordPress(dot)com to run your newsletter, you can now add a welcome message, describe subscription tiers, and optionally offer a free plan.

If you want to try blogging on a platform built on AT Protocol (which federates with Bluesky), you can get 25% off a Pro plan at Offprint, Leaflet or pckt.blog. All three platforms use the Standard.site schema, and links render quite nicely on Bluesky.

Cannes Lions 2026

This week was the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. And by creativity, they mean ads. It’s been called the Oscars of the advertising industry. Big advertising platforms like Google and Meta use it to announce ad-related updates. And it’s a huge gathering for players in the “creator economy”, including creators and influencers.

One of the themes was new tools to connect Creators and Brands. If you are an advertiser, also do check out the links (there are tons of AI-powered updates, of course).

Google is adding new tools for advertising on YouTube. Part of that is a new Content & Creator Insights API, “providing richer information about YouTube creators and audiences, enabling more effective media planning for agencies.”
TikTok added the ability for advertisers to build custom Creator Networks within Content Suite, “allowing advertisers to build a curated pool of creators, employees, partners, or brand advocates to receive campaign briefs or turn their existing brand-relevant videos into high-performing ads”. This is launching with Starbucks, building on their Green Apron Program of employee creators.
Meta announced that Creator Marketplace will now include Facebook Creators, in addition to Instagram Creators. And the Partnership Ads Hub is making it easier for businesses to find creator content to turn into an ad, with creator consent (creators can give pre-permission to speed up the process), and paid performance insights. The new Meta Creator Marketing Hub will launch later this year, combining the Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub.
Meta is bringing Live Video Ads to Instagram and expanding them globally on Facebook to “expand awareness of shopping streams”. They are also expanding the Affiliate Partner program, adding new live shopping tools, and making it easier for viewers to buy.
Snapchat will be launching the Snap Creator Network, an AI-powered system to help match creators and brands. This is a “first step toward a more agentic creator marketplace, where AI can turn advertiser intent into ready-to-launch creator campaigns, managing discovery, activation, and fulfillment end-to-end.”
LinkedIn added a new Collaborative Posts feature that lets pages and members share post authorship. All collaborators are listed at the top of the post. This is being tested over the next few months.
Pinterest is adding AI-powered shopping experiences.

More Social Media

Pinterest now lets creators link their Amazon Storefront, easily tag Amazon products in pins, and feature items from their Storefront on their profile.

Facebook is bringing back the Facebook Creator Studio app, “reimagined as an AI-powered companion app.” Facebook originally removed Creator Studio in 2023, pushing Creators to use its Business Suite platform instead. The new app includes:

Facebook Creator Assistant, which you can use to ask questions about your content, get personalized guidance or brainstorm ideas.
Personalized insights into your content.
AI-powered comment prioritization, highlighting the “most important” comments and drafting replies “in your voice”.
Creator Dashboard, which will be split from the Professional Dashboard. There will also be a separate Business Dashboard. Meta finally realized the needs of Creators and businesses are not the same.

Tools

Gemini has new features:

There’s a Google Play connected app to find and install apps and make in-app purchases.
Businesses can connect their Google Business Profile for real-time insights, and there are new business notebooks to organize your files.

Worth Reading

Aresluna: Show your hands honor for the strange power they bring you. This is an interactive history of designing “finger-friendly interactions” on typewriters, keyboards, and screens.

Social Media Today: Meta plans to replace 90% of content review staff with AI. What could possibly go wrong?

Looking toward the future in Scientific American: Young American Scientists

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Peggy K's Creator News

Creator Weekly: YouTube Studio Insights, Instagram Effect Builder, Twitch Clips

Top Updates

YouTube Studio Insights

Ask Studio Analyzes Images

TwitchCon Announcements

YouTube and Video Updates

Web Publishing & Search

Social media

Tools

AdobeMAX Updates: AI Tools and Google Collab

More Reading

Creator Weekly: YouTube Ask Studio Support, Edits for Desktop, Shared AI Training Controls

Top Updates

Get YouTube Support with Ask Studio

Edits Launches on Desktop

Shared AI Training Control for Websites

YouTube and Video

Web Publishers and Newsletters

Social Media

Tools

More

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

Top Updates

U.S. Midterm Elections

Instagram Launches Longform Video

YouTube Promotes Microdramas

Second Chance for (Some) Terminated YouTube Channels

Twitch Stream Recaps Spotlight

Reddit to Require Login

Public Discord Posts Appear in Search

IFTTT is now AI

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing and Search

Podcasts

Social Media

Tools

More Reading and Watching

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

Top Updates

🛡How secure is your site?

🎃 Halloween Creativity

🏠 Redesigned YouTube Mobile App Home Tab

🛡YouTube Freezes Hijacked Channels

🗣Twitch Stream Recaps

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

YouTube and Video Creators

Web Publishing

Podcasts

Social Media

Tools

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Bonuses, Facebook Algorithm, Creator Search Profiles

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts Bonuses

Ask YouTube Expansion

Facebook “Your Algorithm” (and Substack)

YouTube and Video

Web Publishers and Newsletters

Social Media

Tools

More Reading

Creator Weekly: Search Profile Expansion, Edits Instagram Carousels, YouTube Shopping Analytics

Top Updates

SynthID Watermark Detector

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

More Reading

Creator Weekly: Promoting Original YouTube Shorts, Facebook Forum Groups App, Edits AI Assistant

Top Updates

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

Reading and Watching

Creator Weekly: Made on YouTube announcements, Adobe Premiere Android app, Multimodal Search Performance

Top Updates

Made on YouTube

Free Adobe Premiere for Android