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Creator Weekly: YouTube Communities, Instagram Insights, Twitch Clips

Creator Weekly: YouTube Communities, Instagram Insights, Twitch Clips

Peggy K
February 01, 2025

It’s been a long week, hasn’t it? I’ll leave it at that. Good news, no TikTok updates this week! There are updates for YouTube, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram and more.

Top news and updates this week

Tip: Get the most out of your Google One Premium subscription with advanced Workspace features.
YouTube Communities are expanding to more channels, and the current channel Community tab is now the Posts tab.
New in YouTube Analytics: Device Type card shows what type of devices (phone, computer, TV, tablet) your viewers use to watch your videos.
YouTube updated their Harassment policy to ban content with simulations of dead individuals narrating their death.
YouTube shared tips on creating Shorts, the new Hype monetization and Community Guidelines updates over the past year.
Twitch lets creators export vertical Clips to Instagram, in addition to YouTube and TikTok.
Blackmagic Camera 2.0 for Android lets you control recording on multiple phones and tablets on the same wifi network.
e same wifi network.
Adobe Premiere Pro (beta) has new AI-powered Media Intelligence Search and translated captions.
Spotify is giving a special Creator Milestone Award plaque to top podcasters.
AdSense Publishers can customize the European Regulations message button options for “higher consent rates”.
Substack is expanding its Substack Defender legal support program from the US to include Canadian and UK creators.
Bluesky profiles now have a Videos tab.
If photos are your thing, try the Pinksky photo client for Bluesky.
Threads lets you tag people in photos, mark up shared posts and has added a Media tab on profiles.
Instagram Insights has new metrics for View Rate, Views Over Time and gives personalized performance tips.
Instagram shared image dimensions in different places on the platform (takeaway: important parts of the image should be in the center).
Google’s Gemini in Sheets can now provide data insights.
Plus more interesting reading and watching.

Ten Years Ago This Week

Last week: Facebook added the option to report “false news” and started demoting reported content in the news feed. Did that solve the problem with spreading fake news and hoaxes? Of course not. Learn more about Facebook’s measures against the spread of fake news over the past decade.

Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday to find out what was happening ten years ago this week.

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
What do you think about this week’s updates? Join the live Creator Weekly on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC).

Take this week’s quiz ✅
What do you know about YouTube family plans?

New Tips and Tutorials

Did you know your Google One Premium plan (2TB+ storage) comes with premium Meet and Calendar features like recording, live streaming to YouTube, and appointment scheduling? And that everyone in your family group has access? Learn more.

To Do & Try

YouTube Analytics has a new “Device Type” card. Open Analytics in YouTube Studio on desktop or mobile, click the Audience Tab and scroll down to see how much watch time your channel gets from viewers on Computer, Mobile, Tablet or TV. You can get more detailed stats by clicking “See More” (or the card). Why is it important? It lets you see where your current audience is, and where you may be able to grow. Learn more.

Data Privacy Day

January 28 was Data Privacy Day (also called Data Protection Day). The big platforms took the opportunity to explain how they protect user privacy and the privacy tools they offer.

TikTok Privacy Center: Celebrating Data Privacy and Protection Day
Meta: Reflecting on Meta’s $8 Billion Investment in Privacy
Google posted AI and security: Safeguarding users and strengthening national security, which is more about policy than privacy,
and How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024

YouTube Communities Expansion

YouTube’s mobile-only Communities are rolling out to more channels. With a Community enabled for your channel, fans (on mobile only) can comment on posts and make their own posts. You can manage who can post, moderate the content, or turn off the Community.

If it’s available for your channel, you will get an email and see a banner on your channel pages in the YouTube mobile app. Learn how to manage Communities.

I don’t have access to Community yet on my channel, but I’m hoping to do that soon. It’s a good thing that channels can build communities without having to set up on a third party platform like Discord or Reddit. Communities don’t have many features, and there is room for improvement once more channels have access.

YouTube is also changing the name of your channel Community tab to the Posts tab. All your posts will still be there, and it works the same way - you can post, and viewers can comment, vote in polls or take quizzes. It should hopefully prevent confusion when visitors to your channel are looking for the actual Community.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube’s Harassment policy has been updated to prohibit “Content that realistically simulates deceased individuals describing their death or violence experienced.” (so ghoulish). This goes into effect February 10th, when such content will be removed. Also not allowed under existing policy: reveling in or mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual.

YouTube also posted a recap of policy updates over the past year or so. Check to make sure you are up to date on all the changes.

YouTube’s Creator Insider channel posted a “mythbusting” video about the Hype system, explaining how they will try to prevent abuse and give smaller channels a fair chance at ending up on the Hype leaderboards.

YouTube shared tips from successful Shorts creator Jenny Hoyos. What should you do? Hook viewers within the first second; tell a story that shocks, intrigues, then satisfies the viewer; use thumbnails for branding; and focus your storytelling for shorter videos.

Twitch is rolling out the option to export Clips directly to Instagram, in addition to YouTube Shorts and TikTok. Learn more about how to share Twitch Clips.

Vimeo is doing its part to attract TikTok creators, especially their video editor, advanced privacy settings and ability to embed the videos anywhere. It’s sort of a weird sell, because the Vimeo editor doesn’t seem to be designed to create the kinds of videos that creators use CapCut for. And I think of Vimeo as a platform for professional long form content, which isn’t the same thing at all.

Adobe announced new AI-powered features in Premiere Pro (beta): Media Intelligence lets you search for clips using descriptive terms and caption translation into 17 languages. There are also updates for After Effects and Frame.io. See the link for details.

Blackmagic Camera 2.0 for Android is a professional-grade movie making app. It has the ability to control multiple phones and tablets on the same wifi network, and has physical camera-style controls over shutter speed, ISO and more. PetaPixel has the details. The camera app is free, with optional paid Blackmagic Cloud support for remote storage and integration with DaVinci Resolve. Get it in the Google Play Store. It’s compatible with the Pixel 7 Phone and higher and the Pixel Tablet, Samsung S25 Ultra, Sony Xperia and other devices.

TikTok has a new content series, “Behind the Breakthrough”, profiling “breakthrough artists” who got their start on the platform, starting with Gigi Perez.

Short form video is the new trend on LinkedIn. Digiday has the scoop.

Streaming platform Kick now has live rewind, similar to YouTube’s DVR feature.

Podcasting and Audio

Spotify is giving Creator Milestone Awards to top podcasts. The award is based on specific streaming thresholds: Gold (500 million Spotify streams), Silver (250 million streams), and Bronze (100 million streams). The six podcasts receiving awards will be hand-delivered a plaque and highlighted by Spotify in the app and on social media. It’s like the YouTube Play Button plaque, but more elite.

Web Publishers and Search

AdSense Publishers can now choose to display (or not) the European regulations “Do Not Consent” button by country. The “Consent” and “Manage Options” buttons must always be present. Not surprisingly, Google says “On average, messages without a “do not consent” button result in higher consent rates.” Learn how to set up your European regulations message.

Substack has been touting its support of “free speech” and “freedom of the press” (I’m rolling my eyes at some of the people they highlight whose journalism has been of dubious quality, but I guess that’s the “free speech” part). They are investing in Substack Defender, a legal support program for journalists and creators on the platform. It is being expanded from the US to include creators in Canada and the UK. Publishers with at least fifty paying subscribers can apply for assistance.

Bluesky profiles now have a dedicated “Videos” tab. They also reached 30 million users, and are feeling sparkly.

Pinksky is a new photo client for Bluesky, with Instagram vibes. You use the platform to access your Bluesky account, and it shows you image posts from people you follow. It even has a story-like interface at the top of the page.

Reelo is a new TikTok-like app built on the AT Protocol, which means it should be able to federate with Bluesky. It supports videos up to three minutes long, and has a swipeable vertical video feed. It’s being developed by just one guy, so development may be slow. He hopes to launch the app in March, and will soon have a sign-up for beta testers.

Meta’s Threads is rolling out three new updates: tag people in shared photos, markup posts when you quote share (for example highlight text or circle parts of the content), and a dedicated Media tab on profiles for shared images and videos.

Threads also shared tips highlighting its features: Search, Tags, Voice Recording, GIFs, resharing Media, Polls, Post Editing (15 minutes), Drafts, Post Scheduling, Cross-Posting to Instagram and Custom Feeds. (Maybe all those didn’t need to be capitalized, but it seemed right when I was writing this).

Threads has reached 320 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users.

Instagram Insights added new metrics:

View Rate: Percentage of followers and non-followers that continue to watch a Reel after the first 3 seconds.
Views Over Time: Comparison of how many views a Reel or post received compared to the average views your content gets over the same time period.
Personalized tips based on how your content is doing.

Note that Instagram Insights are only available to business and creator accounts. Learn more.

Instagram also shared the dimensions of images and videos in various places on the platform. See the post for details, but the main take-away message is to keep important footage or imagery and text in the center of the image.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared info on how Stories rank. The most important signals they look at are “the likelihood that you’ll tap on the story, like the story, or reply with a message.”

Meta really wants popular TikTok creators to start posting Instagram Reels. PetaPixel reports: Meta is Paying TikTok Creators Up to $300K to Post on Instagram Reels

I’m not going to lie, this 404 Media headline made me laugh. 'Everything I Say Leaks,' Zuckerberg Says in Leaked Meeting Audio

More AI Updates and Tips

This sounds really useful: Gemini in Google Sheets offers new analytical tools: “you can ask Gemini questions about your data and Gemini can provide valuable insights, such as contextual trends, patterns, and correlations between different variables in your data. Gemini will also generate charts based on your data that you can insert as static images over cells in your spreadsheet.” This is available for Google Workspace and Google One AI Premium subscribers.

Gemini in the Google Workspace side panel can now generate images from prompts in 8 languages: English, and now French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. This is available for Google Workspace and Google One AI Premium subscribers.

DeepSeek is a new AI-powered chatbot from China that apparently was developed much much more cheaply than OpenAI’s bots, and performs almost as well. There are a lot of angles to the story. For example, there are claims that DeepSeek trained on OpenAI data. I thought Casey Newton’s take was interesting: DeepSeek is also a design story. LifeHacker explains how you can try it, and why you may not want to.