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Creator Weekly: YouTube Live, Spotify Comments, WordPress AI Team

Creator Weekly: YouTube Live, Spotify Comments, WordPress AI Team

Peggy K
May 31, 2025

New this week: YouTube live side-by-side mid-rolls, AV1 live streaming, Spotify podcast comment threads & links; a new WordPress AI Team and more.

🔴 Join me live on Sunday to chat about this week’s updates
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Top news and updates this week

To try this week: share Google Photos albums with a QR code.
YouTube launched side-by-side mid-roll ads for live streams.
YouTube now supports the AV1 video codec for live streams.
YouTube is testing a leaderboard for live stream viewers.
You can now use StreamYard to stream to Kick.
You can now use Restream to stream to Mux and Substack.
X now has 4K live streaming, but no roll-out to creators (yet).
YouTube updated the monetization review process to re-review videos with yellow icon “limited” ads.
YouTube Shorts editor now uses Lyria 2 for Dream Track music generation and Veo 3 for Dream Screen video generation.
Google says it will add a visible watermark to Veo-generated videos, in addition to the SynthID watermark.
YouTube is rolling out Google Lens in Shorts (in beta).
YouTube is experimenting with comment audio replies.
If you upload videos to Drive you can now see open counts (to see if people are watching) and use Gemini to answer questions about the content.
TikTok launched a native app for the Apple Vision Pro.
Spotify Podcasts now have threaded comment replies and “in this episode” links.
Medium found that people like to be emailed updates, but they don’t want to give their email address.
There is now a WordPress AI Team, to help guide development of AI features.
Instagram will now display the full dimensions of your 3:4 photos.
Instagram Stories can now expand your landscape photos with the new AI Expander tool.
Meta says reduced automatic moderation, plus Community Notes, is “working”.
LinkedIn is limited profile links to accounts with a Premium Business plan. They are also adding new post metrics, including profile views and new followers (and clicks on your Premium custom button link).
Plus more updates for Gmail and Google Forms, and reading about education, science, the CIA and more.

🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: Organize your memories with Photos and see the world with Cardboard and Expeditions

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

Google uses the big announcements at the Google I/O developer conference to show the path they plan to walk down for the next year. This year, it was all about AI.

Back in 2015, the focus was on the shift to mobile, building for the “next billion users”, and bringing new tools for exploration to the masses.

Google Photos split away from Google+ into its own service, with free unlimited photo uploads, top notch filters and search for faces, locations and objects in your photos, and creative tools.

They also were pushing the Cardboard VR viewer, with Expeditions for students, viewing 360-degree YouTube videos, and the brand new Jump camera rig for creating those immersive environments. This was VR for the masses!

Get the details and the view from 2025.

To Do & Try

This week Google Photos turned 10. They shared 10 tips you can try, including a new feature: share Google Photos albums with QR codes. You can let someone scan the code on your device or print it out. This option is currently rolling out.

Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is launching side-by-side mid-roll ads for live streams, replacing full-screen mid-roll ads. When the ad starts playing, the video player shrinks, audio is muted, and the ad plays next to the ongoing stream until it's skipped or the ad ends. These are only available in normal latency live streams when viewed on desktop web and TVs. enable mid-rolls with "Let YouTube Decide" setting for side-by-side ads to be automatically enabled. Learn more or watch the general overview.

YouTube now supports the AV1 video codec for live streaming, which has improved data compression. In practical terms that means live streams should look sharper, with clearer detail and less blurriness. AV1 has been used for video on demand since 2018. This is initially available on “select high traffic live streams”, and will gradually roll out more widely.

YouTube is testing a leaderboard for live streams. Viewers earn points for engaging with streams. The leaderboard will show the top 50 engaged viewers for the channel, and the top three get a badge that appears in live chat. Viewers can opt out of appearing on leaderboards in their YouTube settings. Creators don’t have an opt-out option.

You can now use StreamYard to live stream to Kick. Kick was launched by the founders of the Stake(dot)com online casino, and it’s much more gambling content-friendly than Twitch or YouTube.Kick streaming is already available from Restream and Streamlabs Talk Studio.

Restream now supports streaming to Mux (an infrastructure provider for online courses, internal training, and the like) and Substack (recommended for members-only podcasts, live Q&As).

X now has 4K live streaming, which they showcased with a livestream of the latest Space X launch. No word about how creators can access this. X launched 4K video uploads a couple weeks ago.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says Instagram Live is a good way to reach people who already follow you, but not a good way to increase your following.

Podcasting

Spotify has new podcast discovery features:

Creator-added "in this episode" links to other Spotify content like playlists or songs.
Threaded comment replies & emoji reactions
Podcast recommendations on Home
And a new Podcasts Following feed

Web Publishers and Search

Google has fixed the bug that added “noreferrer” to links from Search AI Mode.

Good news? Google's Sundar Pichai Doesn't Think Web Publishing Is Dead

Interesting observation from Medium: when they added the option for readers to subscribe to new posts by email by just clicking a button, they saw a 7-fold increase in email subscribers. They concluded that people are more likely to subscribe if they don’t have to give their email address. That’s not a great result for creators who want to build a platform-independent audience by creating their own email list.

Medium is making the personalized daily Medium Digest easier to reach by adding it to the Medium mobile app.

WordPress (the .org, not the commercial .com) has formed a new WordPress AI Team. The team is meant to “steward AI development thoughtfully” aligned with the long-term goals of WordPress. They are taking a “plugin-first” approach, rather than integrations with the WordPress Core. The initial four contributors are from Automattic, Google and 10up.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, parent company of WordPress(dot)com, says they will be “fully returning” to the WordPress(dot)org project. In January Mullenweg announced that Automattic would be “reallocating” resources due to his legal battles with WP Engine. It’s not clear if this means that there will soon be a settlement in that case.

Surf, Flipboard’s federated social media and RSS feed reader app, has made it easier to get started with Starter Sets. The app lets you build your own feeds from Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon and blog and news feeds. Starter Sets make it easier to create your own feeds, with sources you can start from.

Instagram now (finally) displays 3:4 photos in posts and carousels. That’s the native aspect ratio of most smartphone cameras. 4:5, square and landscape photos are also supported.

If you share a square or landscape photo in an Instagram Story, you can use the new Expander tool to use AI to expand the image.

Meta says that reduced automatic moderation, along with Community Notes, are “working” because they have seen a substantial reduction in the number of incorrectly removed content. They don’t share how much misinformation or policy violating content that may have been missed. Social Media Today takes a deeper look.

WhatsApp now lets you create collages, share with music,and turn a photo into a sticker.

You now need to have a Premium Business plan subscription to add a website link to your LinkedIn profile. The option to add a link to your profile was previously supported through Creator Mode.

LinkedIn is rolling out new post analytics, with metrics for posts that drive profile viewers and new followers. If you are a Premium Business subscriber you can also see stats for clicks on your Premium custom button (like your website or newsletter).

Communication and Collaboration

There is a new optional setting in Google Forms that adds the option to contact the form owners.

Google is starting to automatically show AI-generated summaries of email threads in the iOS and Android Gmail app. Previously you had to select “summarize this email”. The synopsis will automatically update as people send more replies to the thread. This is available to Google Workspace customers and personal accounts with a Google One AI Premium subscription.