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Creator Weekly: Livestream Promotion on Shorts, Jewels Buy Gifts, Spotify Partner Program

Creator Weekly: Livestream Promotion on Shorts, Jewels Buy Gifts, Spotify Partner Program

Peggy K
November 16, 2024

Hello all! I hope you are having an excellent Autumn weekend. This week’s edition is extra long.

There are updates for video creators from YouTube, TikTok, Spotify (yes!) and Facebook, new features and news from Threads and Bluesky as more people ditch X, updates for web creators from Google Search, AdSense and WordPress and so much more.

Top news and updates this week

YouTube Shorts promote upcoming livestreams.
On YouTube you can buy Jewels to give Gifts that let creators earn Rubies.
Longer YouTube Shorts may not be fully treated as Shorts until the first week of December.
Google Ads gives advertisers tools to manage partnerships with YouTube creators.
YouTube Studio app now has a Community Hub instead of a Comments tab.
Spotify launched a Partner Program for Video Podcast Creators.
Facebook Metrics are now Views for all types of content
Beehiiv is investing in journalists.
TikTok is testing integration with affiliate networks.
The November Google Search Core Update has started rolling out.
AdSense is updating its first-party cookie controls for web publishers.
WordPress 6.7 is now available.
Threads won’t ask people to import their Instagram follows when they set up an account.
Threads lets you save up to 100 drafts, shows Fediverse followers on profiles and posts, and is testing custom feeds.
Instagram lets you remove inactive accounts from your Followers and soon will remove the option to follow hashtags.
Threads and Bluesky have had a big surge of new users, mostly from X.
Bluesky says they don’t use user content to train AI.
Use Gemini AI to generate images in Google Docs (subscription required).
Lots more reading and watching!

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
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Take this week’s quiz ✅
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New Tips and Tutorials

Open this Short in the YouTube mobile app to take the poll: Do you have unlisted YouTube Playlists? I explain why you want to do that in the video.

To Do & Try

Bluesky signups are surging. And there are third party tools and directories to help if you want to join. Get started by following accounts in a Starter Pack (in the past week the directory has jumped from 3000 to more than 14,000 starter packs) or follow a topic feed (Science!). Find your Twitter/X followers with the Sky Follower Bridge Chrome extension or use the Porto Chrome extension to import all your Tweets/X Posts. I’m PeggyK over there.

Upcoming livestreams promoted on Shorts

YouTube just added a new feature that will show viewers a reminder for upcoming live streams in the Shorts feed.

Schedule a live stream and viewers of your Shorts within 24 hours of that scheduled time will see the reminder option.

Buy Jewels to Give Gifts that Earn Rubies

YouTube has launched Gifts powered by Jewels. This was originally announced in September.

Here’s how it works:

Fans buy a bundle of Jewels, with real money. The cost varies.
Fans can use Jewels to buy virtual gifts (like a grinning disco ball)
When the fan gives the Gift to a creator, the creator earns Rubies.
Each Ruby is worth 1 cent. So 100 Rubies is a dollar.

Initially only US users can buy Jewels and only US Creators in the YouTube Partner Program can receive gifts. It will be rolling out over the coming weeks.

If your channel is eligible, you will see a new “Virtual Items” module on the Earn tab in YouTube Studio, where you can enable this new revenue stream.

Gifts can only be given on vertical live streams. So if you haven’t tried that yet, now is probably a good time to get started. I’m planning on giving it a try.

Note that there isn’t any set revenue share, because fans may pay different amounts for the Jewels. Rubies are always worth 1 cent.

There’s a special Creator Incentive promo running through February 28. Earn a 50% on Gift earnings if you have at least 3 vertical live streams, each with at least one Gift, all within the same month. Learn more.

Spotify Partner Program for Video (Podcast) Creators

Spotify launched the new Spotify Partner Program for video podcast creators.

In the new program, creators can earn ad revenue and a cut of Spotify Premium revenue. That’s in addition to sponsorships and paid subscriptions.

Eligibility requirements include:

Hosting your show on Spotify for Creators
Have a legal address in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia
At least 12 episodes
At least 10,000 consumption hours on Spotify in the last 30 days
At least 2,000 people who have streamed on Spotify in the last 30 days

Learn more.

They also renamed “Spotify for Podcasters” as “Spotify for Creators”, and noted a number of new video features:

Short form video clips (up to 90 seconds)
Custom video thumbnails
New Analytics
Viewer updates: improved video player, personalized video recommendations, comments

Facebook Shifts to Views and Changes Video Metrics

Facebook now uses Views as the single metric that replaces Impressions for Stories, text posts, and photos and Plays for Reels and videos. This does not change how those metrics are counted.

There are also changes to other video metrics. Instead of Watch Time and Average Watch Time, Insights will now show Minutes Viewed and Average Minutes Viewed.

These are calculated a bit differently.

Watch Time was how long people watched, down to the second, including replays. Minutes Viewed is rounded to the nearest minute (which seems like it could be less accurate if your video is significantly under a minute long).

Other metrics, including Reach, 3-second views, 1-minute views, Reactions, Comments and Shares, will continue to be available.

Beehiiv For Journalists

Beehiiv just launched the Beehiiv Media Collective, a significant investment to bring journalists to the newsletter platform.

Journalists who are accepted into the program will receive health insurance (really important in the US), legal support, Getty Images and other online tools, business and accounting software, and dedicated Beehiiv support.

Many journalists have launched independent newsletters, either because they were laid off, or because they don’t want to be limited in their reporting.

Substack has subsidized some writers through its Substack Pro program, but that has not been focused on journalists (They also have a Nazi problem.)

A significant difference between Beehiiv and Substack are their revenue models. Substack lets all writers use the platform for free, but takes a 10% cut of your subscription revenue. If you want to offer paid subscriptions on Beehiiv, you have to pay a monthly fee, but you can keep 100% of the subscriber revenue.

To do a little math, if you have 5000 subscribers paying $5 per month (total $25,000/month), Substack would take $2500 of that (10%), but Beehiiv only charges as little as $79 per month. That’s not the only difference, of course, with Substack offering features like chat and live streaming for community building.

In any case, it will be interesting to see whether the journalists in the new Beehiiv program can build a sustainable business.

Applications are open through the end of the year.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube’s latest update on longer Shorts is that they will start appearing on channel pages, YouTube Studio and subscriptions in early December. More info from Creator Insider.

Advertisers can use Partnership ads powered by Brand Connect “authentic” YouTube creator videos in their ad campaigns by linking a video or channel to their Google Ads account (with the creator’s permission). YouTube channel owners can prevent unlinked Google Ads accounts from using their videos (Studio > Settings > Channel > Advanced). Advertisers can manage creator partnerships from inside Google Ads. Learn more about how that works.

YouTube is testing QR code verification as part of the channel termination appeal process.

The Comments tab in the YouTube Studio app is now the Community Hub tab.

The AI-powered experimental Dreamtrack feature in the YouTube Shorts editor now lets “a small group of creators restyle a limited number of official songs made available by select music partners”. They will include attribution to the original song and have a label showing they were restyled with AI. It’s interesting to see YouTube treading so carefully to make sure the music labels are OK with its AI offerings. It seems like other platforms may not feel the need to do that.

To comply with the EU’s new Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA), YouTube and Google will stop displaying political ads and paid political promotions in the EU.

TubeFilter reports YouTube wants the British government to support creators.

TikTok is testing integration with 3rd party affiliate networks. This could be beneficial for both creators (who can earn from affiliate links) and brands.

TikTok launched Symphony Creative Studio for advertisers and marketers. It has several AI-powered tools to automatically create videos from brand assets, AI avatars, video editing, “Daily Video Generations”, and automatic translation and dubbing.

TikTok now lets users use one login for TikTok and Lemon8 (its image sharing app), making it easier to share across apps.

Twitch has updated its Hateful Content policy to prohibit using the term “Zionist” to attack an individual or group. They treat “Zionists” as a proxy for “Jews” or “Israelis”.

Apple released Final Cut Pro 11, with AI features (Magnetic Mask and transcribe to captions) and spatial video editing. There is also an updated version of Final Cut Pro for iPad.

Web Publishers and Search

The November Google Search Core Update will be rolling out over the next two weeks. It’s too soon to say how this may affect sites.

Google’s John Mueller says don’t go overboard using Google Trends for content creation.

AdSense is merging its “first-party cookies” and “First-party cookies for personalization” setting into a single control. And starting in December, “first-party cookies will also be shared with Authorized Buyers” (except in the EEA, Switzerland, UK and California).

WordPress released version 6.7 (“Rollins”) with the new Twenty Twenty-Five theme, a zoomed out view to manage your layout, add dynamic content by connecting blocks to custom fields, and font size styling.

Patreon now lets eligible creators gift one month of membership to fans or give new fans a discount.

Beehiiv adds a new “Contributor” role to Team publications. Now Admins have full access, Members have access that excludes “sensitive” areas (like payments), and Contributors can only access the post editor and automations.

Beehiiv also now supports WebP images.

Threads is separating just a tiny wee bit from Instagram. Now when people sign up for Threads, they won’t be asked if they want to import all the accounts they follow on Instagram. Instagram head Adam Mosseri says “We’ve been running a test for a while now and it looks like people actually prefer their experience if they build a different graph on Thread than the graph that they had on Instagram.” I’ve been using Threads a fair amount, and it’s surprising to me that Meta was surprised that people have different interests on a text-based platform and an image-based platform.

Threads now lets you save up to 100 drafts on mobile.

Threads is expanding its testing of custom feeds. This lets you create a feed with topic searches and profiles. You can then switch between the For You feed, Following Feed and your custom feeds. This is the feature I miss the most from Twitter, so I hope I have access soon.

On Threads you can now see the full list of Fedverise followers on all posts profiles, not just your own content.

Instagram says it does not downrank content that is marked as sponsored.

Instagram now lets you remove inactive accounts from your Followers.

Starting in December, Instagram will no longer let you follow hashtags.

As I write this, Bluesky has 17.7 million users, and is currently adding about 1 million new users a day. That is still tiny compared to Threads, which added “more than 15 million signups in November”.

Bluesky lets you set your own domain as your handle. That’s especially good for businesses and brands that want an official identity.

The Bluesky post editor now lets you compose threads.

Jason Koebler writes: The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet

Bluesky says they do not use user content to train AI, and have no plans for doing so. They do use AI tools for content moderation and the Discover algorithmic feed.

Bluesky also says they will never suppress links and has an unusually high percentage (30%) of posters compared to most platforms.

X’s new terms just went into effect, giving X the right to train Grok AI with user text, photos and videos.

Communication and Collaboration

Features are available to free accounts unless otherwise noted.

A nice little update for Google Chat: You can respond to messages on the Home tab directly on desktop, without leaving Home. The conversation opens in a split pane. This should be available to everyone.

Use Gemini to generate cover images and inline images in Google Docs. This requires a paid Gemini add-on for Business, Enterprise, Education or Google One AI Premium.

Have Gemini reference your Google Calendar in Gmail. This requires a paid Gemini add-on for Business, Enterprise, Education or Google One AI Premium.

More AI Updates and Tips

AI companies may need to shift gears, as Casey Newton reports: AI companies hit a scaling wall.

There are new generative AI tools for Brands uploading to Getty Images and for enhancing images on Adobe Stock.