Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts AI Backgrounds, Threads Custom Feeds, Google Scholar at 20

This Thanksgiving week, I want to give special thanks to you, dear readers. Thank you for reading and special thanks to all of you who join my live streams, so I’m not just talking to myself!

Top news and updates this week

• Google Scholar is 20 and now offers AI summaries of scholarly works.

• YouTube expands access to AI-powered Dream Screen (backgrounds) and Dream Track (music) in the Shorts editor. 

• Longer YouTube Shorts (1-3 minutes) are now being treated as Shorts, rather than videos.

• YouTube added new text formatting buttons to the description editor on mobile and soon on desktop.

• YouTube is expanding availability of automated translation and dubbing. 

• Google Search updated its site reputation abuse policy to combat “parasite SEO.” 

• AdSense is launching collapsible (bigger) anchor ads. You have to opt out if you are currently running regular anchor ads on your website. 

• AdSense is simplifying its first-party cookie controls, and will start sharing cookie data with “Authorized Buyers” in December. 

• Beehiiv and Substack shared updates on how they are doing and new features they have launched this year.

• Bluesky is still on the rise, and apparently the new home of many scientists. Should you be active there? Maybe? 

• Threads now lets everyone create custom feeds, and they have modified the Home feed to show more posts from people you follow.  

• Instagram is removing the option to follow hashtags. 

• LinkedIn is retiring live Audio Events.

• X adds community notes on links, custom swipe gestures in the iOS app, and the ability to  “rewind” a live stream video.

• Google Chat lets you send up to 20 photo and video files in one post; is getting the Google Drive app by default; and is rolling out the option to organize your Chat conversations list.

• Google Meet will keep you centered (previously a premium feature, now for everyone).

• Plus lots more news, tips and interesting articles.

New Tips and Tutorials

Did you know you can follow YouTube channels in a feed reader? Browse uploads for your selected channels in chronological order, and if your feed reader supports it, organize them into folders and mark viewed videos as “read”. (Also thanks to Andrew Hatchett for discovering this works with playlists too). 

If you are in a creative mood, the YouTube Shorts editor now lets you generate backgrounds with Dream Screen AI (if you are in the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand). You can generate either a static image or a 5 second video clip. Learn how to use Dream Screen.

To Do & Try

If AI-generated backgrounds aren’t your style, the YouTube Shorts editor also Dream Track, an AI-powered instrumental music generator. Learn more from the YouTube Creators channel.

Your YouTube Gaming 2024 personal recap is now available. Go to youtube.com/gaming on mobile and you will see personalized stats like your top 5 games and whether you are in the top 1% of fans for a particular creator. If you don’t watch gaming videos you probably won’t see anything though.

Google Workspace is giving away a free trip to Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas to a US resident. Post how you use Gemini with Google Workspace for work or in your daily life on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok (but not YouTube) before the end of November. Tag Google Workspace and use the hashtag #GeminiAtWork. Learn more from their Instagram post.

Bluesky gives developers access to the Jetstream, the live “firehose” of posts, and some have created fun visualizations. Andy Baio has collected a bunch of these in a thread. My favorites are Nightsky (every star is a post - click to view), and Emoji Rain, that shows every emoji posted falling like raindrops.

Google Scholar is 20 (and getting AI)

Many of the online services and tools popular today were launched in the early aughts.. Wikipedia launched in 2001. Gmail, Facebook, and Firefox launched in 2004. Blogging was in its prime. 

And then there is Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) which launched 20 years ago this week.  

Scholar is a repository of scholarly and academic articles and US case law. It launched at a time when search was in its infancy, and, even today, these technical resources aren’t generally available on the open web. Scholar, along with Google Patents (launched in 2006), made it feel like we were truly entering the information age.

Google shared a retrospective with some history and little known facts about the platform. 

It’s pretty no frills. After you do a search, you can click a link to read the article, save references to your library, find related publications, or generate a citation in commonly used formats.

Earlier this year, they launched the Google Scholar PDF reader extension for Chrome, that lets you preview references as you are reading an article, jump to the figures and save citations. 

Earlier this month, the extension added AI Outlines. (No surprise there). 

If you are interested in scholarly articles in science, history, economics and other academic subjects, this is a good place to start.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

Vimeo had a bit of a redesign, with improved search, updated video settings page, and a better organized video library.

Longer (1-3 minute) Shorts on YouTube have finally moved to the Shorts tab on channel pages, Subscriptions and YouTube Studio. 

YouTube is adding text formatting buttons to the description editor, making it easier to add bold, italic and strikethrough text. This is available on mobile and desktop. Learn more from Creator Insider. 

YouTube is expanding the availability of automatic dubbing. This includes translation between English and French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese.

YouTube is testing a “pay to Hype” option in Brazil. More details from Creator Insider.

The YouTube AI Incubator program is a collaboration between Google and YouTube and music professionals. Google met with participants to share their work on AI-powered music tools, and listen to feedback. Google has shared their top take-aways, noting that monetization, attribution, and control are significant concerns for music professionals. Google says that YouTube is “actively working on responsible approaches to address these key areas.”

YouTube videos often appear in the Google Discover Feed and AI Overviews. Barry Schwartz explains that YouTube should be part of your posting strategy.

Steven Asarch at Passionfruit asks Is There Actually a Twitch Adpocalypse? (Maybe). 

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search updated its site reputation abuse policy to
“make it clear that using third-party content on a site in an attempt to exploit the site's ranking signals is a violation of this policy — regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content.” It’s part of Google Search’s crackdown on “parasite SEO”.

Google is finally removing the Page Experience Report from Search Console. Barry Schwartz notes that this change was first announced over a year and a half ago.

AdSense is launching collapsible anchor ads. These are more visible than regular anchor ads, because they automatically enlarge ad height on mobile devices.  If you have anchor ads enabled, you can opt out of this change. Learn more. 

AdSense is changing its first-party cookie controls, combining “first-party cookies” and “first-party cookies for personalization” into a single control. Google shares those cookies with Google Ads, and starting December 4th with “Authorized Buyers” (excluding users in the EEA, Switzerland, UK, California and a few other US states). Google says enabling first-party cookies may increase revenue. Learn more.

Google Ads shared a non-technical guide to confidential computing.

Blogger expert Adam shared several useful hacks: make images fit 100% of your column width, display recent comments, with or without the blog owner’s comments included (check the link to see what that looks like).

Beehiiv turned three, and seems to still be going strong. They launched a number of new features this year. Those included monetization (their own ad network, a new referral program, new subscription options, donation and one-time payments), an improved website builder and updated newsletter editor, audio embeds and file attachments, audio newsletters, and their new Media Collective to support journalists. They also consider themselves “actually creator-first” unlike some other platforms (Substack).

Substack reports it has 4 million paying subscribers, but is still not profitable. Substack considers itself a new media ecosystem wherein “communities [are] built around ideas and cultural leaders.”

Anil Dash has a warning about getting locked in to Substack: Don't call it a Substack (“I know you think you have control over your subscribers on Substack. But understand this: every single new feature Substack releases, from their social sharing to their mobile apps, is proprietary and locks you into their network.)

Social Media

A new study published in Nature Human Behavior found that “the virality of political content on social media (including misinformation) is driven by superficial processing of headlines and blurbs rather than systematic processing of core content.” On Facebook, about 75% of posts with links are “shared without clicks.” People read the headlines, but don’t click the links.

Bluesky is still on the rise, and people are starting to pontificate about it. Here are some interesting takes: 

• Sophia Smith Galer (on LinkedIn): Bluesky has a problem: journalists like it. (Requires being logged in to LinkedIn to read it)

• Kai Kupferschmidt at Science magazine: Like ‘old Twitter’: The scientific community finds a new home on Bluesky

• Smriti Mallapaty at Nature magazine: ‘A place of joy’: why scientists are joining the rush to Bluesky 

• Aaron Ross Powell: Why, Despite the Numbers, Bluesky Feels Bigger than Threads (the short version: Bluesky shows you what’s popular, even without an algorithmic feed and Threads tries to show you topics you’re interested in).

• Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today: Do You Really Need To Add Bluesky Into Your Social Media Mix? (The answer? Maybe, but Hutchinson thinks Threads is more likely to be broadly popular)

• Steven Levy at Wired: Bluesky Says It Won’t Screw Things Up 

• AdWeek: Bluesky Is Having a Moment, But Most Brands Aren't Ready to Jump In Yet 

• Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day writes about how Right-wing social networks don't work 

• Humor from The Beaverton: Opinion: Bluesky is a dangerous echo chamber because no one wants to hear from me, specifically (“And I will write an opinion piece like this once a week, published in a major newspaper, to chronicle how my ideas are being censored.)

And a few Bluesky tips:

• Bluesky updated their guide to verifying your account by setting your website as your username. User Terence Eden also published An Easy Guide To BlueSky Verification.

• How to turn a Starter Pack into a List (and why you might want to do that)

Meta shared steps they have taken, including partnering with law enforcement, to go after criminal organizations that run scams on Meta’s platforms.

Several updates from Threads this week, perhaps under pressure from Bluesky’s popularity: 

• Threads has expanded availability of custom feeds to everyone. You can create a Feed from profiles and search topics, which you then can access in the mobile app. This is my favorite thing! 

• They have updated their “For You” algorithm to show more content from people you follow. For creators “you should see unconnected reach go down and connected reach go up.”

• They are working on improvements to Search and expanding trending topics.

• When you tap on the button to leave a reply, you’ll be able to view other people’s replies at the same time.

Facebook is removing the option to allow public followers on personal profiles. Andrew Hutchinson explains why that is significant.

Buffer now supports posting to Instagram personal profiles.

Instagram is getting rid of the ability to follow hashtags.

You know when you open up Instagram and the feed suddenly shifts, making that post you were looking at disappear? They fixed it so it won’t do that any more.

Instagram posted a guide: Difference between Restrict, Mute, Block, & Report, on Instagram 

LinkedIn is retiring its live Audio Events, launched back in 2022 when live audio chatrooms were trendy. You can still create a LinkedIn Live event, and use a static image instead of a video feed. 

LinkedIn shared tips on what content to avoid posting. They want original content, not engagement-bait, no unconstructive or overly negative posts, and of course no spam.

There are some new features on X, including community notes on links (so that every post that includes that link will show the note), custom swipe gestures in the iOS app, and “rewind” a live stream video.

Lindsey Gamble reports: VSCO Is Launching VSCO Sites, A Way for Creators to Create Portfolio Websites 

Communication and Collaboration

Features are available to free accounts unless otherwise noted.

Google Chat is slowly rolling out the option to organize your Chat conversations list  into custom sections. This may not be available to you until January. 

You can now send up to 20 photo and video files in one Google Chat message. Drag-and-drop is supported on desktop.

The Google Drive app will be automatically installed in Google Chat. This notifies you of comments and replies on Google Drive documents that you can reply to directly in Chat.

Google Meet now offers automatic framing to everyone. It also now will continuously keep you centered when using a virtual background.

Facebook Messenger gets HD video calls, noise suppression, audio and video voice messages, and AI backgrounds.

More Reading

Mike Sowden: Hooked on a Feeling (About “felt writing” and storytelling for bloggers and other writers).

IEEE Spectrum: The First Virtual Meeting Was in 1916

Taylor Lorenz: The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds 

Slate: The 25 Most Important (American) Recipes of the Past 100 Years

Thanks for reading! 🌼