Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Editor, TikTok Reprieve, Substack Live

Author

Peggy K
April 05, 2025

This week TikTok is back in the news. Who in the US would buy it? It turns out no one, and TikTok got yet another 75 day extension. At least I don’t have to write about that for another couple months. 

Also this week, YouTube is updating their Shorts editor, there are new vertical video feeds from Skylight Social and Substack, Adobe Premiere Pro added new AI-powered features, plus updates for social media, AI tools and more.

Top news and updates this week

  • April Fools’ Day isn’t what it used to be

  • New and improved YouTube Shorts editor is coming soon.

  • TikTok’s deadline for US sale was April 5th, but has another 75 day reprieve.

  • Skylight Social (on Bluesky’s atproto platform) and Substack woo TikTok users with vertical video.

  • Instagram’s CapCut alternative video editor Edits will be available - for free -  this month.

  • YouTube updates Course requirements to ensure quality. 

  • Substack added livestream scheduling and “Music Mode”. 

  • Spotify published a video monetization playbook for video podcast creators.

  • Adobe Premiere Pro adds AI-powered clip extension, search, color management and translated captions.

  • Twitch announced all creators would be able to monetize, but it turns out there’s a catch.

  • Patreon launched a podcast network program and is adding new podcast features for creators. 

  • Google Slides has a useful new sidebar with building blocks, templates, stock images and more.

  • If Google’s AI Search Overviews don’t do it for you, try the new Copilot Search in Bing. 

  • Microsoft wants Copilot to be your personalized AI companion.

  • Google’s Notebook LM now helps you “discover” new sources.

  • Microsoft turns 50, and you can download the original source code. 

  • Plus more about genetic data privacy, clip art and trade wars.

Ten Years Ago This Week: April Fool!

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

Ten years ago April Fools’ Day was a big affair with pranks from companies like Google. Today, not so much, although there were a few playful updates this year. Take a look.

Take this week’s quiz ✅: What do you know about YouTube Shorts?

To Do & Try

Video Creator and Live Streaming UpdatesTo Do & Try

Canva Create is April 10 with keynotes and speakers. You can register to attend virtually for free.

The Coachella Music Festival starts April 11, and it’s live on YouTube. You can watch up to 4 live stages simultaneously in the YouTube app on your TV.

New and Improved YouTube Shorts Editor 

The YouTube Shorts editor is getting an upgrade with more creative tools. 

  • Better in-app editing: Make precise timing adjustments and edits, rearrange clips, add music or timed text, and preview your Short before publishing. 

  • Automatically sync your clips to music. 

  • Use your gallery photos and effects in templates. The Shorts template creator automatically gets attribution. 

  • Image stickers from your photo gallery. 

  • AI-generated stickers from a text prompt. 

These updates will be coming out this spring (so soon-ish).

Is TikTok Banned?

As you may recall, TikTok had a  January 19th deadline to either transfer control from parent company ByteDance to US owners or be banned in the US. Congress passed that requirement because TikTok’s Chinese ownership was supposedly a national security threat.

When President Trump took office on January 20th, he signed an Executive Order that the law would not be enforced for 75 days.

That 75 day reprieve ends April 5th (the day this is published). 

Earlier this week, Trump said there are a “lot of potential buyers”, and a deal would be announced before the deadline.

As I write this, that hasn’t happened, and Trump has signed another Executive Order to allow TikTok to continue running for another 75 days. 

ByteDance made a statement that simply says: 


ByteDance has been in discussion with the U.S. Government regarding a potential solution for TikTok U.S.  An agreement has not been executed.  There are key matters to be resolved.  Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.

The Associated Press reports that China would not approve a deal in the face of tariffs the US implemented this week. 

It all seems like a bit of a farce. If TikTok is truly a national security risk, it should be banned. If it's not actually a national security risk, then Congress should repeal the law that says it should be banned.

Attracting TikTok viewers and creators

While there hasn’t been a huge flurry of activity from TikTok’s competitors this time around, there were a couple TikTok-targeted updates. 

Bluesky is promoting beta platform Skylight Social, a vertical video app based on the same AT Protocol as Bluesky. It’s currently mobile only and has 150,000 users. It notes that it is “unbannable” and as a Public Benefit Corporation is legally committed to social impact. Learn about their algorithm.

Patreon suggests focusing on your community. On Patreon, of course.

YouTube is promoting a special deal with repurpose.io, where you can get 3 months free. The platform automatically uploads your TikToks and Instagram Reels as YouTube Shorts.

Substack launched their own vertical video feed. In February they added the option to upload videos in the Substack mobile app. They have been aggressively pursuing TikTokers since last year. It feels like it’s moved a long way from being a written newsletter platform.

Are there CapCut Alternatives? 

Note that it’s not just TikTok that would be banned under the law, but all of ByteDance’s apps and services, including popular video editor CapCut. And other platforms are stepping up to fill that potential void.

YouTube’s updates to the Shorts editor will make it easier to create nice-looking Shorts, but that isn’t really a solution for creators who want to post to multiple platforms. The Android YouTube Create app is a more general editor (but isn’t widely available). 

Instagram’s new Edits Reel editor will be available in the “next couple weeks”. According to Instagram head Adam Mossari, it will be free, but may have some paid features. They will have “as many features free as possible.” 

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube has updated Course requirements to help ensure minimal quality. The content you feature in a Course must actively teach something, include at least three non-repeating videos from the Course owner’s channel and be available to all ages (meaning no age-restricted content). Course owners have 30 days from April 30th to meet the criteria. Non-compliant Courses will be converted to a regular playlist. Learn more about Courses, which are currently only available to a limited group of Creators.

At some point in the past couple of months, YouTube quietly updated their hate speech policy. In January, protected groups under YouTube’s policy included “Gender Identity and Expression”, “Sex/Gender” and “Sexual Orientation.” The current policy only includes a combined “Sex, Gender, or Sexual Orientation,” with “Gender Identity and Expression” notably missing. YouTube told tech journalist Taylor Lorenz that the change was “part of regular copy edits to the website, and that the enforcement of the policy hasn’t changed. But others have noted that it’s not the same thing, and if it is being enforced the same way that should be more clearly noted.

Hollywood Report on Vimeo Streaming: Vimeo Wants to Let Every Creator Launch Their Own Netflix 

TikTok lets you highlight comments from friends during live streams. You can set “Marked Viewers” in the LIVE settings in the TikTok app.

Substack has added live video scheduling to their iOS app, live video stats (both for live and archived videos), plus a new Music Mode that disables noise cancellation (letting the original sound come through).

Spotify published a “video monetization playbook for creators”. In this case it’s aimed at podcast creators. It explains how to insert ads, considering sponsorships, paid subscriptions, and merch.

Adobe announced a number of AI-powered enhancements to the Premiere Pro video editor.

  • Extend 4k clips with Firefly AI.

  • Search with AI-powered Media Intelligence automatically recognizes objects, locations, camera angles, and dialog in your video footage library (for example, you can search for “close-ups of hands working in a kitchen”  or  “overhead shots of plates of food”).

  • Premiere Color Management transforms your original log and raw camera files directly to SDR or HDR. Plus six new color management presets in the Lumetri panel. 

  • Auto translate captions in 27 languages and have multiple caption tracks visible at the same time.

  • There is also an update to After Effects to make realistic 3D images with fewer clicks. 

Zach Bussey reports that Twitch’s announcement that pretty much anyone will be able to monetize comes with a catch: you won’t be able to withdraw any money until you become an Affiliate. You will be able to spend the money on Twitch, feeding it back into the system.

Discord has made (in their words) “huge updates” to the desktop in-game Overlay. Check out the details.

PetaPixel recaps a whole heap of new features in DaVinci Resolve 20. (Of course there are AI video and audio features)

Podcasting and Audio

Patreon launched a podcast network program to offer shows from major podcast networks. They are currently offering a selection of podcasts from Wondery and Sony Music.

Patreon is also launched podcast RSS syncing and importing, in addition to Spotify syncing. Creators will soon also be able to create multiple show feeds, and sell collections of individual seasons or episode bundles. Patreon says “podcasters are choosing Patreon because it’s a place where they can share their work directly with their audiences, reach new fans, deepen connections with existing members, manage their businesses, and ultimately earn more money – all under one roof.”

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced the company is restructuring and laying off 16% of their employees. This is the parent company of WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org, which is also owned by Mullenweg), Akismet, Jetpack, Tumblr, and more. 

Microsoft launched Copilot Search in Bing. It generates an “easy-to-digest summary of the most critical points, a clear answer, or a smart layout of information.” You can get a list of links used to generate the answer with a click (which is a bit more hidden than links in Google’s AI Search Overviews). You can try it at  aka.ms/CopilotSearchinBing.

Social Media

Discord now supports animated WebP and AVIF format images, which are much smaller files than similar GIFs.

Communication and Collaboration

Google Meet is rolling out dynamic layouts and the ability to pin up to 6 tiles. Learn more.

Google Slides has a new sidebar where you can access templates, building blocks (pre-formatted bits like agendas, quotes, or stats), design components, stock images, and AI-powered image generation. It also includes Speaker Spotlight inserting your video into a slide and Slides Recordings of presentations (Business, Enterprise and Education Plus accounts). Some features are only available in US English.

You can now set default colors and fonts for scenes in Google Vids.

More AI Updates and Tips

Google’s NotebookLM stands out because it lets you create a curated collection of source material to create briefing documents, FAQs and Audio Overviews. They have now added a “Discover” button that will retrieve relevant documents from the web to your sources.

Google has a new head of the Gemini team. Ars Technica reports: “longtime Googler Sissie Hsiao will step down from her role leading the Gemini team effective immediately. In her place, Google is appointing Josh Woodward, who currently leads Google Labs.”

Google’s President of Global Affairs shared Google’s “approach to creative content and AI training.” It seems like the kind of thing Google publishes during litigation, so consider that when reading. The take-aways are that Google believes training on publicly available content is “transformational fair use under U.S. copyright law”, but publishers have the option to opt-out using robots.txt. Google has also made deals with some publishers for “broad data rights”. And they believe “legislative frameworks can build on existing notice-and-removal systems for copyright” to protect individuals’ voice and likeness. There’s more at the link. 

Microsoft wants Copilot to be your AI companion. If you opt in, it will remember what you have previously chatted about, your likes and dislikes, routines and so forth.

In the latest news of AI bots killing the open web: How AI bots are suffocating Wikipedia 

More Reading (and watching)

Microsoft turned 50 and you can download Bill Gates’ original code.

Also: CEO Satya Nadella’s remarks: Celebrating Microsoft's 50 years (it’s all about AI)
And from The Verge: Microsoft is now 50 years old 

OK so… on YouTube: Where Did Clip Art Come From? 

It looks like this  is going to be bad for pretty much everyone: We just declared a trade war with the world.

Thanks for reading! 🌼