This week the big news is that Google’s two video calling services, Duo and Meet, will be merging. As a Meet and Duo user I’m actually looking forward to this update, assuming it goes as described. 

Mobile video is where it's at, with easier to find YouTube Shorts analytics data, and a bunch of new features coming to Facebook and Instagram Reels. 

Plus there are updates for AdSense Publishers, Twitterers, Redditors and more. 

Read on the web, if you’d rather.

June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month

Come Through! for PRIDE 2022 on YouTube: Come Through! For Pride Shorts Challenge (see the link for details), YouTube Pride destination (with history,  “Pride Anthems” playlist on YouTube Music

Pinterest inspires you to be who you are through “We Belong Here” campaign for Pride: highlighting Pinners, We Belong Here landing page. 

Pride Together: Celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community on TikTok: highlighting LGBTQIA+ community members and businesses, LA Pride sponsor events, #ForYourPride live events, #PrideMusic.

Meta Celebrating Pride With LGBTQ+ Communities and Creators: Metaverse Culture Series, Pride-themed avatars and stickers on Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram, and highlighting LGBTQ+ community members and businesses.

Personalize Chrome with themes from LGBTQ+ artists

Celebrating Pride on Snapchat : #GRWMPRIDE Hosted-Spotlight Challenge, new PridB stickers and bitmoji looks, Pride stories on Snap Map

Duo + Meet Merger

Google Duo is merging with Google Meet. Google’s two video calling platforms, the mobile-first friends-and-family oriented Google Duo will get features from desktop-first business-oriented Google Meet, and then become the Meet app on mobile. 

This is going to be a bit complicated, but I’m expecting this to be a positive change. Duo will keep its unique features like messaging and call history, and Meet will bring larger group calls, live captions, screen sharing, in-meeting chat and more features.

I’ve written up an overview of what is happening here,

Check your Shorts (and more)

The new Content tab in YouTube Analytics replaces the original Reach and Engagement tabs. You can filter the data by content type, including Videos, Shorts, Live Streams, and Posts. Get an overview from YouTube Creators, or check it out for your channel at studio.youtube.com/channel/UC/analytics/tab-content/period-default

The main YouTube app now has channel level analytics for Shorts, including views, watch time, likes and more. You can also find Video on Demand and Live Stream stats in the YouTube app. Note that if you want full analytics for your channel on mobile, the YouTube Studio app should be your destination. 

YouTube is rolling out ads on Shorts. These will play between Shorts videos and there will not be any revenue share with YouTube Partners. Learn more about the update to Google Ads Video Action Campaigns and App Campaigns.

YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl answers user questions about Shorts.

More updates ...

More YouTube and Video updates

You can now add images to YouTube Community tab poll posts. To get the Community tab, your channel must have at least 500 subscribers and your channel cannot be Made for Kids. 

Connect the YouTube app on your TV with your mobile phone so you can interact - like, comment, and so forth- on the video you are watching on your TV.

Meta is adding new Reels features on both Facebook and Instagram, including: 

• Create and schedule Facebook Reels on desktop

• Use video clipping tools to repurpose clips from Facebook published long-form videos and live streams as Reels (vertical friendly, 60 seconds)

• Record voiceovers for Facebook Reels or use automated text-to-speech

• Use Facebook Reels Sound Sync to sync your video clip to a song

• Instagram Reels up to 90 seconds (instead of being limited to 60 seconds)

• Instagram Stories stickers in Reels, including poll and quiz stickers

• Import your own audio directly into Instagram Reels, including importing audio from videos on your phone’s camera roll

• New Instagram Reel Templates

• Suggested Reels in the Facebook feed, with the note “As a general best practice, creators should focus on original content, since original content is prioritized in places where we recommend Reels.”

Web Publishing

Privacy Sandbox Topics is Google’s new method of placing interest-based advertising without tracking the sites a user visits in Chrome. This protects user privacy while (hopefully) displaying relevant ads. AdSense is going to start testing Topics on a “small percentage” of traffic in July. You can opt out your websites if you do not want to participate. As a user, you can opt out in your Chrome settings (chrome://settings/privacySandbox).

Google explained how they generate titles in the Search results for documents that don’t use the same script in the title and web page body. If the web page title is transliterated into a different script, or the title is in two languages, Google usually tries to select the language and script of the web page for the listing in Search.

Google acquired FeedBurner 15 years ago, back in the golden age of blogging, when RSS feeds were the thing. I was surprised to note that I have feeds from before that acquisition, and doubly surprising that FeedBurner didn’t force people to link a Google account until 2019. The original announcement from way back in 2007 mentions long gone features, like feed ads. And FeedBurner will stop sending RSS-to-email messages any day now. But the feeds are still served up fine for those who use them.

Tumblr now lets you gift Ad-Free Browsing to other users.

Social Media

According to Bloomberg, in the face of uncertainty of future management Twitter is planning to “pull back resources” for creator features like communities, newsletters and audio spaces, with the focus on “user growth and personalization”. I thought those features were part of the user growth plan?  I’m not too happy, since I’m using Twitter’s Revue newsletter platform.

Twitter’s pro user app TweetDeck for Mac will stop working July 1st.  Twitter says TweetDeck will still be available on the web (tweetdeck.twitter.com). Social Media consultant Matt Navarra speculates that TweetDeck will stop being free, and will become a feature for Twitter Blue paid subscribers.

Twitter Community mods and admins can now pin a Tweet in their Community on iOS and Android. And polls are now available in Communities. So pin a poll?

 Pinterest expanded their Creator Fund to the UK and Brazil. The first group of creators from the UK focus on fashion and beauty, and the first group of creators in Brazil have a focus on food, fashion, beauty and decor. 

Pinterest also acquired THE YES, an AI-powered personalized fashion shopping platform.

LinkedIn released their 2021 transparency report on actions taken on content that violated their Professional Community Policies. Of note: the vast majority of fake accounts, spam and scams are removed proactively, before they are reported by members. Misinformation and harassment/abuse are the other top types of violative content. And 98% of the reported copyright-infringing content was removed.

Pali, Reddit’s Chief Product Officer, shared an overview of improvements Reddit is working on. They mention a ton of new features, including community currention, spaces for live events, making it easier to post, support for more languages, continued development of Reddit Talk live audio, expanded live chat, improved video creation tools, new safety features and mod tools and more. There is a lot going on, so if you are a Reddit user, check out the full post.

Discord has added text chat to voice channels. That way when you are chatting you can easily drop in a link, emoji or note. 

Productivity

You can now easily see where a Google Drive file is located. You can use the folder location name to easily distinguish between similarly (or confusingly) named files.

Zoom has added a new in-client digital whiteboard. Zoom Whiteboard lets you drag and drop images, add sticky notes, add annotations and otherwise collaborate. This is included with all Zoom accounts.

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That’s all the updates for this week. See you next Saturday!

Image: Colored smoke background by Canva Creative Studio. Free for commercial use.