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  • Peggy K's Creator Weekly: Music Wrapped Recap Replay, AdSense Side Rail Ads, YouTube Policy Update

Peggy K's Creator Weekly: Music Wrapped Recap Replay, AdSense Side Rail Ads, YouTube Policy Update

December 03, 2022

Good grief it’s almost 2023! As the year winds down, the annual “top in 2022” lists are out. Have you been watching the most popular videos and listening to the most popular music? Or is your taste outside the current trends?

Plus there are updates for YouTuber creators, web publishers, and social media (and not just Twitter).

Looking Back at 2022

If you are on social media, you have probably noticed all the Spotify Wrapped posts. Spotify gave every user an easily shareable story about their 2022 music listening habits.

Spotify also has Wrapped for Artists, where music artists can learn about their “top fans, how they listen, and how else they engage with you on Spotify”. Earlier this month Spotify gave artists an end-of-year checklist that encouraged artists to make sure their profile is up to date, add their latest merch and concert dates, and make a video for top fans, all of which may be featured in fans’ Wrapped story.

This is great for artists and fun for fans (and is, of course, promotion for Spotify). Hank Green has suggested YouTube do something similar, as one of the failings of trying to have a single “Rewind” for all of YouTube is that there is no one “YouTube community” watching the same things. I think giving people highlights of their own YouTube viewing would be excellent, especially if it is nicely shareable and tied to a similar end-of-year roundup for creators.

If you use YouTube Music, your 2022 Recap can be found in both the YouTube Music app and the main YouTube app (but isn’t available on desktop). Click here to see it (or search the app for “2022 Recap”).

Like Spotify Wrapped, it includes shareable cards with your music personality, unique-to-YouTube content you loved, and artists you discovered before they were trending. There are also your top YouTube Music songs from each season. You can customize those cards by adding your own photos from Google Photos to make a unique memory.

Apple Music subscribers also have a new 2022 Replay experience. That includes your top songs, albums, artists, genres and more with graphics “optimized for sharing with family and friends, on their social channels, or any messaging platform.” It’s been noted that it isn’t really easy to share.

Top charts and Best Content 2022

Updated YouTube Advertiser Friendly Guidelines

YouTube has updated their advertiser-friendly guidelines around adult content, violence, dangerous acts, profanity, and enabling dishonest behavior. Some policies are now stricter and some less strict.

AdSense Side Rail Ads

Side rail ads appear on wide screens, such as desktop computers, and stick to the sides of web pages. No, AdSense has not yet shared an image of what they will look like.

If you have anchor ads turned on, side rail ads will appear automatically on your website. You can turn them off in your Auto Ads settings in your AdSense account.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has shared how they update their policies and Community Guidelines. They are continuously trying to identify emerging trends around the world that might violate policy. Updated policies go through multiple reviews and revisions. And then machine learning is used to identify potentially policy-violating content, which is confirmed by human moderators.

YouTube (and Google Search and News) use fact checks to help viewers evaluate information. Google explains how that works and where you may see the fact check panels. If you want to know what the fact checkers say, Google has a Fact Check Explorer you can use (for a non-charged example, try Flat Earth).

Like & Describe is a new official YouTube podcast, with the “little known stories behind the biggest YouTube trends.”

There’s a new Android YouTube Search widget that lets you access your subscriptions, library, or Shorts with a single tap.

Meta is making it easier to share from video creation and editing apps to Instagram Reels. Apps this will work with include Videoleap, Reface, Smule, VivaVideo, SNOW, B612, VITA and Zoomerang.

Web Publishing

You can now undelete deleted Blogger blog posts. Adam has all the details.

WordPress.com is rolling out gifting. You can add a banner to your site that lets your fans gift you a subscription to WordPress.com. It’s a bit more spendy than a tip jar - if the site owner is on an annual plan, the gift would be the entire one year subscription cost.

Social Media

Emerging social site Hive Social, a much-talked-about possible Twitter alternative, has shut down their servers to try to fix serious security vulnerabilities. Attackers could access (and in some cases modify) all data, including private email and phone numbers used for login, private posts and messages, and shared media. It isn’t known how long the site will be down, especially if they have not expanded their team of three.

Pinterest ended their Creator Rewards program for Idea Pins (their web story format). According to their FAQ, they are shutting down the program to “focus on other creator programs and features”

Twitter will be showing you more  recommended tweets, based on factors like the Tweets you engage with, Tweets that people in your network like, and Topics you follow. To switch to a chronological feed without recommendations, click the “sparkle icon” ✨ at top right of your home feed and switch to “Latest” Tweets.

Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today reports that Meta is sponsoring and promoting two new “mixed reality”/AR art projects.

More

Mozilla Hubs is an open source platform for creating 3D virtual spaces from your browser. They highlight what people are using the platform for, from art galleries, to event spaces, to classrooms.

Header image background: Paperwhites (edited) by Skyler Ewing on Pexels (Free for commercial use)