Peggy K's Creator News

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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🔴 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! 🌼

Creator Weekly: UK teen social media bans, YouTube Membership Smart Pricing, Threads Communities

2026-06-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

Summer is officially here! Be sure to take a break now and again to enjoy the outdoors (this is also a reminder for me).

This week there are new limits on teens using social media, updates for YouTube Partners, Twitch Streamers, writers on Substack, Beehiiv, and Mastodon, Threads Communities, LinkedIn Profiles and more.

Subscribe to the free Creator Weekly newsletter.
Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

Tip: If you live stream AND you are on Bluesky, be sure to set the LIVE badge on your profile. Learn how.

Top Updates

UK will ban social media for under-16s and limit live streaming for all under-18s.
YouTube Partners can update Membership pricing every 12 months, and optionally use new smart pricing recommendations.
Twitch rolled out Dual Format streaming to all, and 4K streaming to Affiliates and Partners. If you don’t want to set up Dual Format streaming yourself, use Streamlabs.
Twitch has a new Creator Certification program for Sponsorships.
Google Vids added new Veo video generation tools and expanded the selection of default AI avatars.
Edits video editing app can export video up to 15 minutes, and has new AI Restyle and Opacity Blending tools. Plus new Reel metrics if you are sharing to Instagram.
Substack has a new Creator Kit media kit tool and will add brand partnerships.
Beehiiv MCP (which lets you connect to AI platforms) now have write access to create posts, launch polls, and more.
Mastodon launched Collections (curated lists of profiles) and email Newsletters.
Bluesky now lets you reply to specific messages in Group Chats and wants to hear from you about Communities.
Facebook added AI Mode in search (with info from Groups & Reels) and can make cutout collages and videos from your camera roll.
Threads hit 500 million monthly users, and has added new Communities features and “Your Algo” to influence your feed algorithm.
Instagram image carousels can have a separate caption for each image.
LinkedIn simplified the look of Posts, enabled GIF replies and lets you add Connected Apps to show your expertise.
Android 17 is rolling out with Screen Reaction recording, AI music and video tools and more.
Plus more updates for website owners, video creators, live streamers, Android phones, Adobe Firefly, Google Play Books, Google Scholar and more.

UK to limit Social Media to 16+

Under-16s in the UK will be banned from social media starting in Spring 2027. This is similar to the recent age restrictions in Australia.

But the UK regulations take it further. 16- and 17-year olds will not have access to live streaming or being able to be contacted by strangers by default, including on gaming platforms.

The ban will apply to Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X, but not messaging services. Social media companies, including YouTube, Meta and Snapchat, argue this will push teens to the less safe corners of the internet.

And it’s not clear it will work. Natalia Perez-Gonzalez at Creator Spotlight notes that in Australia, where under-16s were banned from social media last year, 60% of 15-year-olds who previously had accounts were still using those platforms.

A ban doesn't make teenagers disappear — or even protect them — so much as it scatters them into group chats, DMs, gaming servers, and uncovered apps with far less moderation and far less visibility. It also pulls teens out of the open, legible spaces where brands, media, and the rest of us currently read the first signals of what's coming.

She also notes that teen girls set the trends, or at least are good at identifying trends. Platforms cater to that, so banning younger teens may make the internet less vibrant. And it’s not clear that limiting teen expression online is a good thing.

It’s also concerning that this will require platforms to collect more personal information. Adults will NOT have to verify their age if their account:

has been open more than 16 years
has a credit card connected to it
linked to an email address that’s age-verified in other ways
completed age verification under the Online Safety act

Even so, many 16 and 17-year-olds and adults will have to go through age verification.

Possibly related: Meta and YouTube have recently added new tools for parents and a safer experience for teens.

YouTube and Video Updates

YouTube is updating the pricing of Memberships to reflect current exchange rates. You have until August 17 (60 days) to decide whether to use the recommended market pricing or set custom prices.

There are also new smart pricing recommendations inside YouTube Studio, with personalized suggestions based on your location, your members’ location, your audience and your engagement with members. Pricing for new members can be updated once every 12 months per Membership tier (current members keep their pricing). YouTube is clear that they don't guarantee the recommended prices will increase your earnings, so use the suggestions with caution.

If selling things is your passion, YouTube shared a short explainer on how to get started with the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program.

Twitch launched a Creator Certification program. Complete the brief Creator Camp course and get a special badge, training to maximize sponsorship opportunities and early access to Open Invite campaigns. The course covers Sponsorships on Twitch and creating brand suitable content.Learn more.

This week Twitch rolled out Dual Format streaming for all streamers and 2k (1440p) streaming for Partners and Affiliates. Vertical stream VOD expire after 7 days

Streamlabs now supports dual format streaming to Twitch. The desktop app uses cloud based streaming, which uses less upload bandwidth and doesn’t tax the CPU and GPU on your computer as much. That keeps stream quality high. Dual Output to one vertical and one horizontal destination is free. Streamlabs also supports dual streaming to YouTube.

StreamYard added bulk actions to manage your media assets like overlays, backgrounds and videos.

Google Vids has new Veo video generation tools. This is available to personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and Google Workspace accounts. Generated clips are standard definition (720p) and 8 seconds long. Now you can:

Extend existing video clips
Generate multiple clips at once

Google Vids expanded the default AI avatar selection from 23 to 53, including new photorealistic, 3D cartoon and graphic novel styles. You can also generate avatars in 16 new languages. And custom avatars can now be used to prompt generated video clips where they can move around. This is available to personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and Google Workspace accounts. Learn more.

The Edits video editing app has added longer video export (up to 15 minutes), Restyle with an AI prompt, and Opacity Blending (blend stickers, text and captions with your video). If you use Edits to post to Instagram, there are audience insights that you can share as a PDF, and compare metrics for up to 3 Reels.

TikTok has new rules for shopping livestreams. TikTok wants “lively verbal interactions” with your audience while showing your face. They prohibit AI-generated voices or audio recordings, screen recordings, or still images or animated content that covers more than half the screen. And you have to demonstrate and reference the promoted product.

Web Publishers

Google Search Central News has a new video covering Generative AI Reporting in Google Search Console, Search Profiles for US creators and publishers, and more tips from the SEO community.

And in the latest episode of Search Off the Record, Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discuss whether you should use Markdown for your website. Does it help AI crawlers understand your site? Probably not. And Markdown can hurt discovery.

If you are a bestseller publisher on Substack you can use the new Creator Kit tool to create a media kit to share with potential sponsors. Substack says that a new platform for brand partnerships is “coming next”.

Beehiiv has added write access to the beehiiv MCP (Model Context Protocol). If you connect your beehiiv account to Claude or other AI (like Gemini), you can use it to create and edit posts, launch products and polls, or build multi-step automations. Write access requires a paid plan; free accounts can use the MCP for analytics and similar tasks.

Social Media

Mastodon launched Collections, curated lists of profiles to follow. It’s designed to minimize the potential for spam.

You can only be included if you opt in to “Feature me in discovery experiences”
Collections can include up to 25 profiles.
There’s no “follow all” shortcut.
Collections can be shared with a link
Collections appear on the creator's profile, under the Featured tab.

Mastodon has redesigned profiles to be more “ergonomic” and easier to edit.

The new Newsletter feature on Mastodon lets you opt-in to allow anonymous users (not signed in to Mastodon or a Fediverse account) to follow your posts by email.

Designed for institutional accounts, journalists, bloggers and creators with their own server.
It must be enabled for your server, as this can be expensive to manage.
Your account must have an assigned role with the necessary permissions. (Mastodon says discuss it with your server admin)

Bluesky updated Group Chats so you can reply to specific messages. Group Chats just launched, and are a first step towards Communities.

And if you are interested in building a Community on Bluesky, the design research team wants to hear from you.

Facebook added AI Mode in search. Ask a question and Meta AI will base the answer in public posts in Groups and Reels. The example is looking for travel suggestions, which is pretty low stakes. But there is a lot of bad information and promotional content posted on Facebook, which seems like would make this not particularly valuable.

If you have given Facebook access to your camera roll (!) , there is a new AI editing option that can create cutout collages and videos. You can also change your clothing with AI, like adding your soccer team’s jersey.

Threads has reached 500 million monthly active users, bringing it close to the activity on X. There are a new Community and timeline features:

Communities are out of beta.
Communities Hub on the left menu to find your Communities and suggested Communities.
Distinct Community Icons
Community Progress to show if a topic is close to becoming a Community.
Community Champion status to more users.
Local Communities for Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
“Your Algo” to indicate which topics you do or don’t want to see. The changes can last 1, 3 or 7 days. This is available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Instagram image carousels can now have up to 20 slides, with a separate caption for each slide. This is a “long-requested feature”.

LinkedIn is simplifying the look of Posts in the main feed so there is “less visual noise”. What that means in practical terms is there are just small icons for Like, Comment, Repost, Send (and no text labels). Follow the link to see what it looks like.

LinkedIn added Connected Apps. Connect the apps you use and they will display on your profile with a statement about how you use the app (which is provided by the app, and cannot be edited).Apps include (or will include soon) Adobe Express, beehiiv, Buffer, duolingo, fiverr, GitHub, HeyGen, HubSpot, Magic Patterns, Replit, Riverside, Sprinklr, Zapier and a bunch more. The purpose is “building credibility”, but note that it does not include professional software like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, Figma, AutoCAD, or Affinity.

And now you can add GIFs to your LinkedIn comments.

Tools

Adobe Firefly AI Assistant has new tools, including brand kit creation, short product video creation, create video from storyboards (and create storyboards), Quick Cut (assemble footage into a first draft that you can edit). You can also use natural language, invite collaborators and set workflow preferences. AI Assistant is available in public beta for Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Frame.io and InDesign. It’s available in private beta for for After Effects.

Upgraded Adobe Firefly can save elements (characters, locations, objects) and let you organize projects. This is available in private beta. Sign up here.

Adobe Premiere has new features including faster AI masking, new audio editing controls, single word captioning, new dynamic transitions and improved connections to Firefly and Adobe Stock. There are also updates to After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom. Click the link for details.

Google Calendar now lets you choose from 24 default colors for events, rather than 11, and there is a full color picker on the web.

Google Scholar is a repository of research articles. This being Google, it has an AI-powered Scholar Labs search feature. With the latest update, it’s faster, scans more papers, and allows users to do 10x more searches per day. For each paper in the search results, it describes why it might be relevant. And you can ask follow-up questions. My take is that this looks useful, but don’t rely on the AI-generated descriptions which can be misleading.

Google Play Books now has Book Insights. Yes, this is an AI chatbot that lets you ask about the plot, characters, locations or other information. No spoilers, because it will only reference the text up to your current reading location.

Android 17 is starting to roll out. It includes the new Screen Reactions recording (record yourself, along with your phone screen), and a lot more.

There are also creative features in this month’s Pixel drop (see availability by device):

Screen Reactions (with Android 17) are coming first to Pixel devices.
Create videos with Gemini Omni remixed from your photo or video references. Requires an AI subscription.
Create original music tracks with lyrics in Gemini from a photo or text prompt.
Real time voice translation between English and Hindi. Requires a Pixel 10a or higher device.

Microsoft introduced the new Surface Pro (which can be used as a tablet or laptop) and Surface Laptop. Both ship with Affinity “pinned to the start menu” for professional design, photo and publishing tools. Canva acquired Affinity in 2024, and it is free to use.

Creator Weekly: YouTube DMs, Instagram Grid, Spotify Podcast Plays

2026-06-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello dear readers, this week the World Cup tournament begins, with features for fans and creators. Plus there are creator updates for YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and more.

📰 Subscribe to the free Creator Weekly newsletter.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

Top Updates

There are World Cup features and content for creators and fans.
Apple Podcasts will get better support for video podcasts on Macs and tvOS, editing with Apple Intelligence in Photos features, and more from WWDC 2026.
YouTube DMs have expanded to the US, Brazil and more countries.
The YouTube Creator Responsibility Policy now prohibits using YouTube’s tools to create content that harms others (including spam).
The YouTube Remix button has moved.
YouTube’s portrait mode mobile player has been simplified.
You can now view non-music YouTube Shorts in picture-in-picture mode.
Spotify has redefined a podcast “play” to require watching or listening for at least 30 seconds.
Spotify for Creators also added new analytics data and graphs.
Restream now lets you automatically publish Live Clips as you stream. And you can now livestream to Patreon directly.
The Edits video editing app lets you try Beta features, and will soon have a desktop version.
AdSense expanded PayPal Hyperwallet payments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Google Search Central posted guidance on hiring an SEO and using 3rd party SEO tools.
Canva has new integrations with Google Gemini.
NotebookLM can now help you research and output information in more formats.
Instagram lets you reorder your profile image grid.
Instagram “Your Algorithm” is coming to the main feed, and Adam Mosseri explained why top down algorithmic feeds make people feel bad.
Bluesky now lets you attach up to 10 photos to a post, create Group Chats with up to 50 people and share your profile with a QR code.
LinkedIn added a Creator Marketplace to connect Creators with Brands (now in Alpha).

World Cup For Creators and Fans

This week starts the World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world.

Here in the Bay Area, it feels like there hasn’t been that much ado about the matches being played locally. The Australian team has been welcomed as they make Oakland their home base, and there are local watch parties, but people don’t want to pay big prices to attend matches for low ranked teams.

It will be interesting to see if excitement builds over time.

Of course this is going to be a Creator and fan bonanza, both for big names, and anyone else who wants to join in.

On YouTube there is an official international group of FIFA World Cup 2026 creators sharing their experiences. There are also official effects in the Shorts editor, available to everyone.
On TikTok fans should search for “World Cup”, then tap “Play Now” to unlock collector cards. There is also the new TikTok Pro Events app in the US with curated FIFA World Cup 2026 feeds, merch, and content from the TikTok team of official Creator Correspondents.
Meta Threads has a dedicated event Live Chat and World Cup Community, special stickers & emoji, live scores and collect media highlights.
Instagram added enhanced World Cup search to surface top Reels, Stories and profiles. There’s also a new Goal! AI voice effect in DMs, with a “surprise” animation.
Facebook lets you double tap the Facebook logo at the top of the Feed to enter Football Mode with “themed reactions and other surprises.” You can use AI “Wear It” in Stories to add your team’s jersey to your photo, or add soccer-themed stickers. There are also new protections for players (from harassment) and fans (from getting scammed).
On Bluesky you might want to add this sports journalist Starter Pack.
SnapChat also has official creators (and athletes) posting, special Lens and Bitmoji collections, creative tools and a World Cup Topic Chat.
Twitch has a Football Fest category, a special badge you can get by watching at least 15 minutes of content in the Football Fest 2026 Event Category, and a special FootballHype emote. Clearly they don’t have permission to actually refer to the World Cup, but they are getting in on the action.

Apple WWDC 2026

This week Apple announced their latest features and tools at their annual World Wide Developers Conference. I’m going to list a few highlights, but you can get a more comprehensive overview here.

Apple Podcasts in tvOS gets a redesign with “video podcast playback, a new sidebar navigation …, and support for the podcast creators’ episode and show artwork.
Apple Podcasts on the Mac have an improved video podcast experience, including picture-in-picture support (coming this fall).
Apple Podcasts are adding a new “search within show” option to find episodes faster.
iCloud Shared Albums are getting a number of improvements including new collaborative temporary albums, support for more file types, full resolution sharing and the ability for even non-Apple users to participate.
Siri AI and Apple Intelligence is integrated across the Apple ecosystem from the new Image Playground to communications in Mail and Messages to answering questions and more. These are powered by Apple Foundation Models, which are “custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models”.
The Photos app has new AI editing features, including Spatial Reframing (to change perspective), Extend (to expand images), and improved Clean Up (to remove objects).
Image Playground now lets you generate high-quality photorealistic images (rather than cartoons). You can use it to create Lock Screen wallpapers, Contact Posters or share the images.
You can have Safari monitor web pages for changes.

Apple also made a big point to explain that European users will have delayed access to the new Siri AI, due to the Digital Markets Act.

YouTube and Video

YouTube DMs have expanded outside Europe, and are now available in the US, Brazil and several other countries. There's also a new messaging icon to make it easier to manage your conversations. This is designed for sharing videos with friends and family, rather than for Creators to communicate with fans.

You can only invite people to chat with a link shared on a 3rd party platform. No inviting channel names or handles.
You must be 18 (and possibly verify your age).
In the mobile YouTube app only.

YouTube updated its Creator Responsibility policy to add that “using YouTube’s features, tools, or services to create new or modified content that harms or is intended to harm others is considered a serious violation.” This includes creating spam and covers both on- and off-platform behavior. Violations can result in loss of access to YouTube features or monetization being disabled. The Creator Responsibility policy was introduced in February 2018 as part of the fallout of the Logan Paul incident.

The Remix button under YouTube videos is now in the Share menu (rather than being a separate button). This is available in the YouTube mobile app, and opens the Shorts editor.

YouTube simplified the mobile player in portrait mode. Watch to learn more.

Like, dislike, share and ask have new icons.
The Like count moved from the like button to below the video title (next to the channel name).
The horizontal scrolling list of action buttons is replaced with a 3 dot menu icon (including Save, Download and Report options).
No changes for landscape, desktop or TV.

Picture-in-picture viewing for YouTube non-music Shorts is now expanding to everyone globally. YouTube Premium subscribers can access picture-in-picture music content.

YouTube ended the Shopping tags in posts experiment. You can no longer tag products, and as of July 3rd viewers will no longer see existing product tags.

Spotify has updated their definition of a “Play” for podcasts, and now will count the number of times a podcast was watched or listened to for at least 30 seconds. This is the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) Measurement definition. How does this align with other platforms? Apple reportedly counts every play longer than 0 seconds. YouTube counts a a TrueView ad view after 30 seconds, and it’s assumed that long form video views are counted the same way (although YouTube just says they count “legitimate views”, without any timeframe).

Spotify for Creators has also added new data and graphs to help Creators understand their podcast analytics.

Audience segments: New or returning fans.
Trends: Compare your latest episode to the rest of your episodes.
Engagement: Insights on comments, followers, audience retention.
Full history available in your Analytics overview.
Jump from homepage overviews directly to in depth charts.
Discovery Journey: How your show reaches new audiences on Spotify, including impressions, plays and episode completion. And which episodes drive your growth.

Restream now lets you automatically publish Live Clips as they are created (and while you are still streaming). You can choose which channels (platforms) clips post to, set a minimum “virality” score (so only the best clips post) and add preset captions. This requires a Live Clipping subscription, which includes 250 clips for $59 per month (spendy!). Learn more about Clips.

You can also use Restream to live stream to Patreon directly. You can choose the visibility, including limiting to Patreon paid tiers.

StreamYard now lets you easily download your chat after the livestream ends.

Streamlabs now shows Twitch Power-Up alerts.

The Edits video editing app has more new features:

Search for specific topics in the Inspiration tab to find the right template (like “Birthday”)
15 new in and out animation effects (iOS only)
Create multiple project versions.
Snap and align elements to each other for precision editing.
The Beta tab in your settings lets you try new features before they launch.
And Edits AI Assistant and Desktop version is coming soon.

Web Publishers

The new Desktop Mode plugin for WordPress (by Automattic) creates a “desktop-style workspace” for admins. You’ll see a dock on the side, windows and all your content and plugins. Like a computer desktop, but inside your WordPress account.

AdSense publishers in Latin America and the Caribbean can now choose PayPal Hyperwallet as their payment method. This was already available in the US, China and Argentina. Follow the link for the full list of supported countries. Once Hyperwallet is set up, you can choose to get a payout to PayPal, and other options.

Google Search Central posted a new document: Google Search's Guidance on Third-Party SEO Tools & Advice. Their take away message: “Some third-party services provide data that some users of those tools misinterpret as somehow being from Google. Third-party tools don't have access to our internal ranking data. They can't guarantee performance. Any predictions are their own and like predictions generally, may not happen.”

Google Search Central also posted: Do You Need an SEO? Tips for Hiring an SEO. It has helpful questions to ask when hiring someone, and what to be wary of.

From Sparktoro: In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click. In 2019 49% of Google Searches ended without a click, but now zero-click searches are up to 68%. Dire for websites. The advice is that your website is still important, if you want to appear in search, but also, “Learn how to storytell, entice, promote, and educate in short-form content: video, audio, images, and text that can live on the walled gardens that dominate our online experiences.”

Canva and Gemini

Canva has integrations with Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini and Perplexity. What this means is that you can generate designs referencing your Canva Brand Kit, search and summarize your Canva Content, edit text and images through prompts and resize designs.

Canva’s Magic Layers, which turns a flat image into editable layered objects and text, is now available to all users in Google Gemini and Open AI ChatGPT. All you need to do is connect Canva in the Gemini or ChatGPT settings, or prompt @canva. Learn more.

For Gemini, you need to be sure to be using a personal Google Account and have Keep Activity turned on. You also need a Canva account. Canva is only available at gemini.google.com and in the Gemini mobile app.

AI Tools

Google’s NotebookLM is getting a number of updates:

Gemini 3.5 and Antigravity, with deeper research and more complex analysis.
More output formats, including PDF reports, data visualization charts, structured data (csv, json), Excel and Powerpoint files and more.
It can now help guide building your source repository in the chat.

Google Gemini 3.5 Live Translate is Google’s new audio translation model, with “near real-time speech-to-speech translation in over 70 languages”. This will be available in the Google Translate mobile app and Google Meet (for Enterprise).

Social Media

You can now reorder your Instagram profile image grid. Changes are saved immediately and shown to your profile visitors. As Instagram says “first impressions matter”, and this makes it easy to make sure your best, most interesting, or most important images are seen first. And if you have a vision for the way your profile should look, you no longer have to carefully upload images in the desired order.

The Instagram Plus subscription is now available, with “fun little extra features”, meant for everybody, “not just professionals”.

Extend Stories from 24 to 48 hours.
See how many times your Story was rewatched.
Search your Story viewer list.
Preview someone else's Story by long pressing.

“Your Algorithm” is coming to the main Instagram feed (rather than just Reels and Explore). Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared some thoughts about the bad feelings caused by the shift to a purely algorithmic feed.
“Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool for shaping your experience. As recommendations took over the main feed, that tool quietly stopped working.” and “I think this loss of agency is part of what people feel when they feel uneasy about social media - not the content itself, but the sense that the experience is happening to them rather than being shaped by them.”
Picking the Instagram topics you prefer in your feed are supposed to make this better, and Instagram is “actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more.” See How to “Tune your algorithm” in the Android or iOS mobile app.

You can now attach up to 10 photos in a Bluesky post. They also redesigned the carousel so that it only appears if there are at least 5 photos.

Bluesky added Group Chats, with up to 50 people. You can add people using a link. This is a step they are taking towards enabling Communities on the platform.

Bluesky also now lets you share your profile using a QR code. Click the Share button on your profile in the mobile app to get yours.

As I posted last week, video comments are now available on Reddit. It should be interesting.

Discord added a new “You Bar” to simplify navigation in the mobile app. It also helps you jump directly to your notifications, profile and settings.

Discord now end-to-end encrypts all voice and video calls (outside of stage channels).

LinkedIn has launched a Creator Marketplace that lets Brands connect with Creators. Eligible Creators will be able to sign up via a new Monetization tab, and create their profile showcasing handpicked content, choosing how Brands can contact them, and evaluate Brand requests.. This is currently in alpha, featuring select Brands and Creators in North America, in English.

Interesting Reading

404 Media: Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Lighthouse Keeper 'Elias Thorne'. We Might Know Why.

TechCrunch: Bending Spoons is going public. Bending Spoons has made more than 50 acquisitions, including AOL, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Evernote, Brightcove, Filmic Pro and StreamYard. Its business model is to acquire struggling businesses, fire the original staff, then increase prices. It will IPO in the US this summer. A former StreamYard team member says, “Every platform they acquire is maintained just enough to keep the revenue flowing. They’re not innovators, they're private equity with a motivated tech team.”

Thanks for Reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: Creator Search Profiles, Twitch Dual Format Streaming, Facebook Creator Assistant

2026-06-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, this week there are new updates for creators, website owners, live streamers and more.

Google is letting YouTube, TikTok and Instagram creators customize their Search Profile and giving webmasters more information about their site’s appearance in AI Search results; Twitch is rolling out Dual Streaming and AI stream summaries; Facebook has a new AI creator assistant, and
has added video replies.

To watch this week: WWDC26, Apple’s annual developers conference, starts June 8. Watch the keynote live on the Apple YouTube channel.

Get the Creator Weekly newsletter in your Inbox every Saturday.
Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

This Week’s Top Updates

Google launched Creator Search Profiles. Creators with a significant following on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X can set up a followable profile highlighting top content.
At TwitchCon Rotterdam, Twitch announced the rollout of Dual Format streaming, 2K streaming, Auto Clips (in beta), AI stream summaries, and more.
Edits, Instagram’s video editing app, now lets you import audio, match volume and select from hundreds of sound effects.
DaVinci Resolve 21 is now available with AI tools, updated editor, photo image editing, and creator features.
Google Search Console is rolling out insights for webpages in AI Search features.
Google Search Console has a new setting to let website owners opt their site out from appearing AI Search features.
AdSense lets you share the full IP address of site visitors in bid requests for personalized ads.
WordPress plugins will be held up to 24 hours for review before distribution, to help find security issues.
Tumblr is adding a Comments tab to blogs.
Substack lets you set rules for post replies.
Google Photos will extract your wardrobe.
Google Drive and Pixel Camera added multi-page scanning.
Dreambeans is a new Google experimental app that creates customized daily informational stories.
Facebook Creator Assistant lets you ask about your post and Reel performance and brainstorm new ideas.
Bluesky lets you upload larger videos (up to 300 MB).
Reddit launched video replies. Mods aren’t happy they are enabled by default.
X added “React with Video” to the iOS app.
Plus what I’m reading, what is bother me, and more new features and updates.

Creator Search Profiles for Creators on YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok

This week Google launched Search Profiles for creators and publishers.

Showcase articles, videos and social posts
Customize your Profile with avatar, bio, website, social links
People can follow Profiles for content in Discover
May trigger a Knowledge Panel in Google Search
Initial launch in the US

Creator eligibility for Google Search Profiles: 18+, content follows Google policy guidelines, and minimum followers on at least one platform:

YouTube: 100,000
Instagram: 100,000
X: 100,000
TikTok: 300,000

You can go to profile.google.com/claim to set yours up.

YouTube and Video

YouTube says there are 2 billion hours of Shorts viewed on TVs every month. Part of the appeal is snackable viewing and watching with friends and family. Learn about the growth of Shorts on TVs from Creator Insider.

Episode 2 of The Brand Deal Desk discusses how to pitch yourself to a brand, using YouTube’s Media Kit.

There was some excitement when a YouTube executive mentioned they were working on integration with publisher paywalls. This would simplify things for publishers with paid subscribers on multiple platforms. But, alas, YouTube issued a statement that there are no plans to launch paywall integration with news publishers, claiming the executive was misquoted.

This week Twitch made a number of major announcements at Twitchcon Rotterdam:

Dual Format streaming (simultaneously in horizontal and vertical formats) is coming out of beta,and rolling out next month. Twitch says they will be adding server-side transcoding for Partners and “many Affiliates” to “offset the strain this can put on some systems”.
2K streaming (1440p) is launching for Partners and Affiliates. Bitrates have increased to up to 7.5 Mbps for 1080p and 9 Mbsp for 1440p, for sharper streams during fast-paced gameplay.
Avatars have been added to notifications to improve engagement, and there will soon be new ways to send notifications (for example adding a guest or changing games)..
For viewers: Stream summaries are a new AI feature that generates a brief synopsis of what happened before you started watching the stream. This is experimental and still rolling out.
New features for Clips: Auto Clips in beta (say “Twitch Clip That” to indicate a moment to be clipped), add captions (edit text, timing and style), share to Twitch Stories, and Clips may appear in the live feed.
New monetization and community features: GIPHY GIFs in chat, gift subs for all viewers who are watching (up to 1000), Bounty Board for Affiliates, Twitch Gameplay Ads for Creator Sponsorships, increased Streamer-Lead Promos, Eurozone streamers can get SEPA payouts with no conversion fees. Also, announced last week Creator Badge Drops and Custom Power-Ups.
New Guilds: Asian Guild, Disability Guild, Indigenous Guild.
More mod appreciation.

Meta is testing a “Series” feature for Instagram and Facebook Reels. Creators create a collection of videos that lives in a new tab on the Creator’s profile.

TikTok launched a pilot of the TikTok Pro Events app in the U.S., starting with the World Cup. Perform tasks in the app (like search for trending hashtags) to earn stars, then redeem stars in the TikTok Shop and other places.

TikTok and the Sundance Collab have launched a four-week live online course on scriptwriting for micro-series. Applications are open.

Restream added Studio chat comment management tools, including pinning comments to show later and dimming already-shown messages.

Restream now lets you stream to an embedded web player, and you can track metrics in Stream Analytics.

StreamYard has new controls to make it easier to add background music.

Edits (the free video editing app from Instagram) has added new audio features:

Import your own audio
Match volume across clips
200 new sound effects.

Blackmagic Design launched DaVinci Resolve 21 (video editing software which you can download for free). Some of the many new features:

Photo image editing with Hollywood color grading tools, non-destructive edits, cropping and reframing, and organizing your images.
AI IntelliSearch to find specific objects, faces or keywords in dialog.
Advanced AI Speech Generator
AI CineFocus for advanced focus adjustment
AI Face Age Transformer, Face Reshaper, and Blemish Remover to make actors appear the way you want.
Extreme Quality AI Ultrasharpen and AI Motion Deblur
Editor and color management updates
For content creators: support for Lottie animations, instant picture-in-picture layout, support for Final Draft and plain text screenplays, square and vertical video resolutions, visual noise reduction, track and follow objects, and more.

Web Publishers

A point of frustration for website owners is that there is little visibility into how sites appear in AI Mode or AI Overviews. To change that, Google is testing a new setting in Search Console that lets website owners “decide if they want their site to appear in and help ground responses in Google’s generative AI Search features (like AI Overviews, AI Mode or AI Overviews in Discover).” This will not be used as a ranking signal outside of the AI Search features.

This is available to a subset of website owners in the UK. Why the UK? Google is “engaging with regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to ensure website owners have the right tools as user preferences evolve.”

Google is also rolling out Search Console insights for the appearance of pages in AI Search features, including impressions and information about which pages appear in AI responses, and in which countries. Notably it does not include the click through rate, or click data (maybe not relevant if people don’t click the links?)

The Google Search May 2026 Core Update is complete. Did your site’s ranking change?

AdSense now lets you share the full IP address in bid requests for personalized ads. AdSense says this can “help you maximise the value of your inventory” as buyers use the full IP address to assess ad impression quality. Full IP address sharing is restricted on non-personalized ads, limited ads requests and restricted data processing requests. It is turned off by default.

WordPress has a new “Protect the Shire” initiative, designed to make their code (and thus the code on your WordPress site) as secure as possible. To that effort, new plugin releases will wait up to 24 hours before they are distributed, giving the plugin review team time to review the code.

Tumblr is adding a Comments tab to blogs, in addition to Posts, Likes and Following. It will show posts people have been commenting on, and you can find your own comments. Comments from people you follow may also be surfaced in your For You feed.

Substack has added “Reply Rules”. This lets you set rules for reply comments on your posts, and if you have automated moderation enabled it learns your preferences and automatically hides comments that don’t meet your policy. This seems good for moderation, but is another step towards Substack being a fully social platform.

Tools

Google Photos Wardrobe is a new tool that compiles the clothes you are wearing in your photos and organizes them so you can try different outfits and whatnot. Face Groups must be enabled. This is available in Brazil, India and the US to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers (and other “select users”) using Android devices.

In the latest Android drop, Google Drive, Files and Pixel Camera have added multi-page scanning, letting you scan multiple pages or documents at once and scan long receipts. It is, of course, AI: “AI works in the background to remove shadows, enhance the image, and ensure each page is only captured once”.

Google Labs is testing Dreambeans, using information from your Gmail, Calendar, Photos, YouTube and Search history to “curate stories that inspire and delight you.” This is available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US.

Social Media

Facebook Creator Assistant is a new chatbot that provides “personalized recommendations based on a creator’s content style, performance, and community and gets smarter over time as it learns their goals.” It lets you ask questions about the performance of your Reels, changes in your audience, and other insights. This is available to creators in the US, Canada and India. Personalized and specialized chatbots seem to be the future.

Facebook’s AI-powered Reels translations are currently available in 9 languages, and will be expanding to Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, French, Thai and Vietnamese. The dubs preserve the tone of the creator’s voice, and there is optional lipsyncing. Translated dubbing is available to creators with at least 1,000 followers, in countries with Meta AI.

The maximum size of Bluesky video has been increased from 100MB to 300MB.

Reddit launched video replies directly in comment threads. They envision this as a way for artists to talk to fans, experts to answer questions, and other creative uses. Comments can include one video plus text. This will be available in all SFW communities starting June 11. Mods can disable this feature, but many aren’t happy this is enabled by default (imagine the worst that could happen with Redditors posting video comments).

X launched “React with Video” in the iOS app. That lets you create a reaction video, with you as an overlay on top of the post you are reacting to.

What’s Bugging Me

404 Media reports on hackers using Meta’s new AI support chatbot to hijack Instagram accounts by simply asking the bot to change the email address. It’s fixed now (supposedly), but it suggests Meta didn’t even do basic security testing before launch. Read the story: Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

404 Media also explains how marketers and spammers are manipulating Reddit to show up in Search: Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search. This is bad for Reddit and bad for people using Search.

What to Watch & Read

Long time video creator Tom Scott answered questions about being a Creator and his YouTube works. It's useful information, from his own experience. Beyond thumbnails and the YouTube algorithm, I think the important take home message is to stop overthinking and just make stuff and try different things.

Science fiction writer Ted Chiang in The Atlantic: No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious

Adobe is supporting the CREATOR Act (Creative Rights for Artists’ Technique and Originality are Reserved Act). This updates US intellectual property law to protect style reproduction from intentional, commercial AI-enabled impersonation. They say it’s “narrowly focused”, aimed at deliberate commercial impersonation of identifiable artists. This has bipartisan support in Congress.

Rabbit Hole investigated: The Unsolved Mystery of Lorem Ipsum

Thank you for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Custom Feed, Facebook Plus & Instagram Plus, Patreon Privacy Settings

2026-05-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, would you pay for advanced creator features on your favorite platform? Meta is betting you will.

Plus YouTube has launched multiple updates (yes, mostly AI-related), Bluesky lets you highlight when you are live, people can set their favorite news sites and blogs as Preferred Sources for Google Search AI Mode, Patreon is adding profile profile features and more.

Tip of the week: Create an avatar of yourself to use when you create videos in the Gemini app with Gemini Omni. Creating an avatar is also rolling out gradually to YouTube.

Join me live: Creator Weekly is live on Sunday to discuss this week’s updates.

Top Updates

YouTube lets you create your own custom feed (US only)
Labels on realistic AI content on YouTube are more visible. And YouTube is getting better at detecting AI-generated content.
Ask Studio chatbot in YouTube Studio can now remember multiple conversations for 30 days.
YouTube Premium subscribers can turn on “Auto Speed” for podcasts, which will automatically adjust playback speed during lengthy intros or information dense segments.
CapCut Pad is a new version of the CapCut video editor for Android tablets and Chromebooks.
Spotify added shareable user clips from video podcasts.
Vimeo is faster, has new profile pages, and simplified review options (which some pros hate).
Google Search now shows Preferred Sources in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and link carousels. Have you added a “Add as a Google Preferred Source” link to your blog or news site?
NotebookLM now syncs sources with Google Drive, so that you are always using the latest version.
Google Workspace icons have a new modern gradient look.
Meta launched Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus subscriptions, with exclusive Creator Story and Profile features. Meta One is an overall subscription with features for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and expanded use of Meta AI tools.
Patreon’s new social Quips feed requires creators to merge personal and creator profiles. Profiles will also show your Memberships by default, and display “Mutuals”. New privacy settings let you control what people see.
X is trying to reward original content, by taking impressions from large accounts that reupload content from small accounts, and awarding them to the original posters.
Bluesky now lets you add a “Live” badge when you go live on YouTube, Substack and Beehiiv, in addition to Twitch.
Plus more updates and articles to read.

YouTube and Video

YouTube’s new “Your custom feed” lets you design a personalized content feed that you can pin as a saved chip at the top of the Home page. Use a prompt describing a mood, favorite topics, or specific interests. It can be general like “give me something different beyond my usual feed” or specific like “help me unwind after work with guided meditations under 10 minutes”. Learn more.

Launch by tapping the “Your custom feed” chip at the top of the Home page.
Available to signed-in viewers in the US.
Only available in English.
Edit the prompt at any time.
Videos you watch from your custom feed may influence your Home recommendations.
YouTube is “continuing to closely monitor the feature’s impact on views, watch time, and revenue.”

YouTube is improving AI labels. The disclosure label for “photorealistic and meaningfully AI altered or generated content” is now more visible. Instead of being buried in the description it will either appear directly below the video player for long-form videos or as an overlay on Shorts. Unrealistic, animated or only slightly altered AI content will continue to have the AI disclosure in the description. An AI label will not affect recommendations or monetization of the video.

YouTube is also updating its systems to better identify AI-generated content. As a creator, you are still required to disclose realistic AI in your videos. But if you don’t, and YouTube detects photorealistic AI content, they will add a label. You can appeal, if YouTube gets it wrong, but if you are using YouTube’s AI tools, or fully generative AI use is indicated in the C2PA metadata, the label is permanent.

The Ask Studio chatbot in YouTube Studio can help you understand your channel’s performance and content, and brainstorm new content. In the latest update, Ask Studio conversations are saved automatically for 30 days. There is a new list view to let you manage and access different conversation threads. Learn more.

Nano Banana is now in YouTube Effect Maker, letting you create “fun, imaginative transformation effects with open prompts that don’t require visual scripting”. Try Effect Maker at effects.youtube.com .

There are new YouTube Premium features for podcasts.Learn more.

“On the go” mode: listener-friendly controls when playing podcast video in the background.
Auto Speed: “intelligently adjusts playback speed during relevant moments”, like slower speech, lengthy introductions or information-dense segments.
Ask Music for podcasts: AI podcast recommendations. This is in addition to AI-generated music playlists.
High quality audio on TV.

New YouTube Creators series: THE BRAND DESK “Explore the perks and pitfalls of managing yourself, then learn how to scale creator partnerships into a sustainable business. Plus, step inside YouTube Creator Partnerships in Studio to learn quick, practical ways to boost visibility, attract brands, and maximize audience reach.” Watch episode 1.

CapCut Pad by Bytedance is now available for Android tablets and Chromebooks. It has “larger workspace, easier controls, and more room for your timeline.” Install it from Google Play.

The main Instagram camera now has a teleprompter (imported from the Edits app).

Spotify has added user clips from video podcasts.

Users can create a clip while listening to an episode.
The clip, episode, chapter or timestamp can be shared via Spotify Messages or to third party sites.
Clips are saved in Your Library.

StreamYard now lets you react to YouTube gifted memberships inside your StreamYard chat and respond in real time.

Vimeo, which was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025, has been rebuilding the platform and adding new features to make it more “valuable”.

Faster uploads, page loading and search.
Simplified review: anyone with a link can comment, even without an account. And comments have timestamps and emoji reactions. (Some pros using this feature really DO want there to be a login wall for comments, so this hasn’t gone over great).
Profiles have a new design and more customization options.
Simplified showcase setup.
Translations in bulk.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search has made several updates to highlight links in the search results:

AI Overviews and AI Mode use Preferred Sources. Links to a Preferred Source will be clearly labeled. Add a Preferred Sources button to your website or blog for readers to click. Or people can add preferred sources manually at www.google.com/preferences/source.
For some searches on a developing topic you’ll see a prominent link carousel, which will highlight Preferred Sources.
Other searches may show a carousel with “helpful perspectives” from online discussions, forums and social media.
There is a new “Highly Cited” badge for articles many other stories have cited.

Write is a new minimal writing editor on Wordpress(dot)com. It’s in beta (click the link to sign up).

WordPress(dot)com shares “everything you need to know” about WordPress 7.0: AI foundations, editing and admin improvements, flexible design controls, new and improved blocks, and performance, accessibility and developer updates.

WordPress(dot)com Reader now has a Social Feeds section that lets you read posts from people you follow on Bluesky, Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms.

Beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk argues that Substack is a closed ecosystem, especially with its algorithmic feed and requirement to allow Apple In-App Purchases. He notes open is good for creators, and email is an open protocol. (And, of course Beehiiv is email-first)

Tools

Google’s NotebookLM will now sync sources with Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides). That way if you update a spreadsheet or slide deck, it’s automatically updated as a NotebookLM source. It also means that if the file is deleted or your access is revoked it will be removed from your notebook.

As was noticed last week, Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive, Meet, Chat, and so forth) icons have a new “modern” look. That means all the colors are gradients. Beyond that, the look is very much pre-2020, when the blocky multi-colored icons were launched.

Social Media

Meta One has launched, as one of several new subscriptions. Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus subscriptions include premium tools for creators and businesses. Meta One is an all-in-one subscription that includes Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, WhatsApp Plus in one package, with additional Meta AI use (currently being tested in a few countries). None of these replace the Meta Verified subscription which is “focused on verification, identity protection and extra support.”

Features for Instagram Plus subscribers reportedly include seeing how many people rewatched your Story, create unlimited audience lists for Stories (not just “Close Friends”), extend a Story beyond 24 hours, post directly to your profile and highlights without it going to your followers’ feeds, additional profile pins and more. Facebook Plus subscribers also have new Story and profile features. (It feels like YouTube will be the last platform that isn't pay to play.)

Threads now lets you add music to your posts.

There’s a new Facebook Guide to making better affiliate videos.

LinkedIn answers common questions about LinkedIn video.

Patreon wants to be a social network: Patreon Creators must combine their personal fan profiles and Creator profiles by July 6. Patreon has privacy controls that let you decide how your memberships and activity appear. This unlocks Patreon’s new Network, with a new Home feed and Tweet-like “Quips” posts.

Part of this change is making Patreon memberships more visible, along with new granular privacy controls. Any new memberships you join after July 27 will be shown publicly, unless you turn this feature off. On the updated Creator Page, there is a list of the creators you subscribe to. And when a fan visits your page, they’ll see mutuals - members of your community they also subscribe to.

X is doing more to reward original content. Head of Product Nikita Bier says that they “identified a number of large accounts that have been programmatically reuploading content from smaller accounts to game the revenue share program and circumvent crediting the original author.” Now the impressions on those posts will be attributed to the original creator. That has the potential to shift the X ecosystem, with large accounts usually driving most of the views.

The latest version of Bluesky has updates for sharing articles, live streams and images:

Use YouTube, Substack and Beehiiv links to go live, in addition to Twitch and Streamplace links. When people click your profile with the LIVE badge, they are taken directly to your stream.
Dynamic Standard.site link cards. Used by Leaflet, pckt.blog, Offprint and other blog and longer article sites.
Updated GIF picker and improved photo viewer.

What’s making me mad

Stat News reports Sally Kornbluth, President of MIT isn’t mincing words about the recent losses to science. America built the world’s greatest research engine. Now it’s shrinking.

“In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn’t or when other countries now investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.”

Interesting reading

Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI: Pope Leo Warns AI Images Are a 'Powerful Amplifier' of Disinformation

YouTube shows submitted for consideration for Primetime Emmy Awards: Julian Shapiro-Barnum “Celebrity Substitute”, Michelle Khare “Challenge Accepted”, Sean Evans “Hot Ones”, Cleo Abram “HUGE* If True”, Brittany Broski “Royal Court”, and Kareem Rahma “SubwayTakes”.

News and Documentary Emmys were announced this week, and YouTube-centered journalists Jorge Ramos (Spanish language news) and Johnny Harris (outstanding graphic design), who publish on YouTube.

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Peggy K's Creator News

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

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

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

Customize Your Home Feed

Shorts Series

Podcast Discovery

Posts in More Places

Conversational Video Editing

Ask Studio Upgrades

Dynamic Thumbnails

Video A/B Testing

Engage with Comments and Communities

Hype with Jewels

Expansion of Watch With

Go Live Together Matchmaking

Live Showdowns

Live Auto Dubbing

Brand Partnerships in YouTube Studio

Dynamic Ad Insertion

Shopping Updates

Protecting Your Voice

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

Top Updates

More Creators Eligible for Google Search Profile

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

Threads Highlights Podcasts

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

More Reading

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

Top Updates

AI-Powered Creator Coaches

Apple Duo’s New Camera

YouTube, Video and Live Streams

Web Publishers

Social Media

Tools

More Reading and Watching

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

Top Updates

YouTube Expands “Watch With” Live Streams

YouTube Branded Content Disclosure

Instagram Adds AI-Generated Profile Labels

TiKTok Comments

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing