Creator Weekly: Instagram Algorithm, TikTok Sharing, Google Photos Video Editor

This week there are a ton of updates, as the big tech companies near the end-of-year code freeze. If something will be launched this year, now is the time!

For video creators there are updates for YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Edits, Facebook, and TikTok. For website owners there are several updates to Google Search Console, improved links in Search, updates to AdSense and more. 

Top news and updates this week

🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Trending Creators

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015. 

In 2015 YouTube launched the Trending tab. It was a mix of Creator videos, mainstream media clips and music. Both Creators and viewers often complained that it seemed unbalanced, with fewer popular YouTuber videos than expected. YouTube did try to address the imbalance, but after almost a decade the Trending tab was removed. It turns out not many people were using it. Today you can find trending charts for music videos, movie trailers and top podcasts, but you'll have to find trending YouTuber videos elsewhere. Get all the details.

If you have a YouTube Community on your channel, pin a post so that visitors won’t miss it. 

Instagram now lets you adjust “Your Algorithm” for Reels. You can see your top interests (as detected by Instagram), adjust what you want to see more and less of, and then (optionally) share your interests to a Story. This is currently available in the US, and will roll out globally (in English) soon.

Spotify Prompted Playlist is a new beta feature that lets you prompt a new customized playlist, it “lets you describe exactly what you want to hear and set the rules for your personalized playlist” and it “taps into your entire Spotify listening history” to understand your taste. It’s currently available in New Zealand.

Letting people pick the topics they want to see seems to be a trend, with TikTok letting you “Manage Topics” and YouTube testing “Your Custom Feed”. 

Facebook updated Profiles, Feed, search and navigation “so you can easily find what you are looking for and dive deeper into your interests”.

TikTok introduced Shared Collections. You could already save content in Collections. Now you can collaborate on a Collection with a friend or family member. You can also choose to make your Collection “available to the TikTok community.” 

There is also a new TikTok Shared Feed. This is a private feed in DMs, based on both participants’ interests. Send an invite to start a Shared Feed. If the other person accepts, every day you will find 15 selected videos in each of your private chats. There’s also a Shared Like history, so you can see what each other liked. Direct Messages are not available to under-16 teen accounts.

There are new Google Search features meant to connect people with websites. Will this improve the massive drop in clicks from Search that many news and informational sites have experienced? It at least should not make the situation worse.

Google Search Console is experimenting with an expanded Search Console Insights report that includes social channel data from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other sites.

The report shows total reach (clicks and impressions from Search), content performance, search queries, audience location, and additional traffic sources (Image Search, Video Search, News Search, Discover). 

Currently it’s only available for automatically identified sites and channels associated with your website. More information

Google Photos has new video editing tools in the mobile app:

YouTube announced that the AI-powered Inspiration Tab is getting an update. Get a sneak peek.                               

Likeness detection is rolling out to all Creators in the YouTube Partner Program by January. If your channel has multiple creators, each one can set up likeness detection. If YouTube detects your likeness, you can request removal for unauthorized use. You can find this setting in YouTube Studio desktop on the Content Detection tab.

Voice replies are now available to more YouTube Creators. This option is available in the Android and iPhone YouTube app. Just tap the comments on one of your videos, find the comment you want to reply to, tap Reply, then Voice Reply. Learn more.

The YouTube Create app is getting a custom version of the Veo 3 Fast model. That lets you use text prompts to generate images and vertical video clips with sound, where you can control the lighting and style (it’s the same model in the Shorts editor). This is available in the YouTube Create app for Android (which is available in limited countries).

New features aimed at advertisers on YouTube Shorts ads: comments on the Shorts video ads, Creators can link to a brand’s website, and Shorts ads for mobile web. Happy advertisers can mean better revenue for YouTube Partners.

If you monetize with YouTube Shopping there is now seller-level data in the YouTube Analytics.

YouTube Brand Partner Video Access (previously called video linking) is an official way to share access to videos and Shorts with sponsored content  with Brands. Get a sneak peek.

Playables (the games on YouTube) will soon be rolling out to all vertical live creators. 

You can now create YouTube Shorts in the Adobe Premiere mobile app for iPhone. (If it sounds familiar, this feature was announced in November). It has exclusive effects and templates and lets you share videos directly to YouTube. It’s free to use. There isn’t currently a Premiere app for Android, but you can preregister for the beta to be notified when it’s released.

It used to be that every year YouTube would create a “Rewind” video, highlighting trends, popular videos and creators. The more recent versions, especially starting in 2018 were wildly unpopular -- they did a poor job reflecting what most users were interested in. Now, apparently all those Rewind videos are unlisted on YouTube’s channel. They are still linked from the annual Rewind post, so you can find them, but you can’t search YouTube for them.

The Edits video editing app by Instagram now lets you organize idea stickies into storyboards, remix public Reels, and use templates. The templates section of Edits is first available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

Twitch now lets you react to Clips with emotes. Streamers can customize this with their own channel emotes. Learn more.

Twitch has added more granular notification settings for the Channels you follow. You can choose from Always (to be notified of everything), Personalized (based on which notifications you respond to), Go Live Only or Off. If you had notifications “On”, they are now “Personalized”. 

The Google Search December core update is rolling out. That may take up to 3 weeks. 

Google Search Console now includes AI-powered configuration. Describe the analysis you want to see and it automatically sets the appropriate filters, comparisons, and metrics.

Google Search has brought back the “Forums” tab, alongside Web, News, Shopping, and so forth. Click that to just see results from sites like Reddit, Facebook Groups, Quora and other forums. 

Google Search Console has launched weekly and monthly views in performance reports. The new granularity selector lets you switch from the default Daily views to Weekly or Monthly. This will “smooth out daily changes and focus on the overall trend of traffic to your website.

If you are an AdSense publisher using Offerwall, you will be automatically enrolled in Offerwall optimization. Optimization includes automatically determining how often an Offer is displayed to visitors, which may be more frequently than what you set manually. You can turn this off in your settings.

AdSense is updating the Privacy & Messaging tool for compliance with new privacy regulations in Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island. There is also a new toggle to target a message to “All current and future supported US States” (enable this so you don’t need to select additional states as they pass privacy laws).

Stock photo platform EyeEm is shutting down. The company declared bankruptcy in 2023 and was acquired by Freepik. Creators can choose to opt-in to allow their content to remain available on Freepik.

There are new Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Express, and Acrobat apps for ChatGPT letting you edit images without leaving the AI chat.

Facebook is launching new tools to connect Creators and Brands. Creator eligibility for partnership ads has expanded to include professional mode profiles, in addition to pages. And it’s easier for Creators to tag partner Brands and they can “proactively share an ad code with an advertiser for partnership ad permissions.”

Instagram is adding (presumably) AI-generated post descriptions to improve ranking in the Google Search results. If the description is incorrect, there’s nothing the original Instagram poster can do about it. Discussion on Bluesky.

You can now share a public Instagram Story to your own Story.

Reddit is testing verified profiles for individuals and businesses. This is opt-in. Once verified the profile has a grey verified checkmark. There are no special privileges that come with it. This is currently being tested by public figures and “trusted partners” that are active on Reddit. 

Reddit finally announced what will happen with Australian under-16 accounts. All Australian users will be subject to an age prediction model. Anyone who appears to be under 16 will be asked to verify their age. Users age 13-15 will have their accounts suspended, and can request a copy of their data. 

Bluesky says they have “upgraded their Age Assurance system” in order to comply with new laws in Australia and other places, and restore access to over-18s in Mississippi. I had to enter my date of birth to open Bluesky today, so this is probably why.

Discord added options to share what you are currently gaming, watching or listening to on your profile. You can connect your Discord account to a PlayStation or Xbox account (it can also detect the desktop game you are playing), Spotify and Crunchyroll.

In Google Meet there is a new option to automatically switch to picture-in-picture when you share your screen. You can control this in your Settings.

Google Beam (previously called Project Starline), Google’s 3D video communication platform, is now available in select USO centers to allow military service members to communicate with their families. 

Google Chat has added the option to schedule messages up to 120 days in advance.

Google Chat is now available at chat.google.com (up until now, that redirected to mail.google.com/chat). Update your bookmarks and any extensions you use with Chat.

404 Media reports: Disney Invests $1 Billion in the AI Slopification of Its Brand. In a 3 year licensing agreement with OpenAI, the Sora video generation platform can use Disney-owned characters, while Disney will invest $1 billion in the company, and says that fan-created AI-generated content will be coming to Disney+.

Google’s Mixboard is an experimental vision board with AI features (of course). You can now turn your Mixboard into a presentation using Nano Banana Pro. Mixboard has also added a selfie camera so you can add your own image to the mix, and it supports more file types, including PDFs. You can also now create multiple boards per project, keeping you more organized.

Google Disco helps you browse the web faster with GenTabs. “GenTabs helps you navigate the web by proactively understanding your complex tasks (through your open tabs and chat history) and creating interactive web applications to help you complete the tasks”. You can sign up for the waitlist to try Disco on macOS.

Google Translate is now using “advanced Gemini capabilities” for improved translation of idioms and live speech-to-speech translation. There are also new language learning tools in the Translate app.

Stitch, Google’s AI-powered design tool, can now create “Prototypes” by stitching together different screens. It also now uses Gemini 3.

Tip: A Googler explains how to “meta prompt” for incredible Veo videos. The process results in very detailed, very long (multiple pages!) prompts for better output.

Thanks for reading! 🌼