Do you listen to podcasts? If you do, you may have more listening options in the near future, as YouTube and Twitter both roll out podcast pages. Plus Twitch Partners can now stream on other platforms, YouTube Music is getting a bit less personal, Medium is listening to its users and more.

Read on for details of those updates and more.

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AI Test Kitchen

If you are interested in learning about what Google’s doing with Artificial Intelligence, sign up for the AI Test Kitchen. It will host a changing set of AI demos that you can play with and provide feedback on.

It’s starting with three demos of the LaMDA language model: you can “Imagine It” to use your imagination to explore any place (real or fictional), “List It” breaks down projects into a checklist of tasks, and “Talk about it (Dogs edition)” to talk about dogs. Learn more.

Note: this will initially only be available to users in the US.

Updates

Podcasting

Twitter is testing a new Spaces tab that leads to an audio hub with both Spaces and podcasts grouped by theme. There will be recommendations based on who you follow on Twitter (for example if you follow Vox, you may be recommended the Vox podcast). What’s not clear is how creators can ensure their podcasts are included (maybe just Tweet the links?). Learn more.

A basic podcasts landing page is now available from the YouTube Explore tab at www.youtube.com/podcasts (via Creator Insider). Plus the YouTube Search results in English may now show “Podcast official” cards that feature specific podcast shows, initially from a small subset of podcast creators.

If you are a podcast creator, and are looking to connect with fellow creators, check out Spotify’s Creator Discord, meant for creative feedback, setting up collaborations, connecting with the Spotify editorial team and more.

Twitch Updates

Streaming platform Twitch made a major change to its Partner program this week. Partners are no longer to exclusively stream on Twitch. They can now also stream on “web-based, Twitch-like” platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube (but not at the same time as their stream on Twitch), and stream simultaneously to primarily “short form, mobile services” like TikTok and Instagram Live. It will be interesting to see if some of the popular live streamers decide it’s worth their while to live stream to multiple platforms.

And there were a number of other Twitch updates announced this week:

• More creator controls on incoming raids

• Native shout outs

• Creator Chat Highlights are rolling out to all creators

• Testing Pinned Chat to highlight comments

• Moments and now available to 50% of Partners and Affiliates, and are easier for viewers to claim.

• Updated mobile app, including Creator Mode, Clips Download and more coming later this year.

• All Partners and Affiliates have access to the Charity Tool, to easily run fundraisers for eligible charities

YouTube Music

If you have been using YouTube Music for your tunes, you can now find your Summer Recap in the app so you can review your top songs, artists and albums. There’s also a personalized Summer Recap playlist. I guess this means summer is over :(

YouTube Music will also be getting slightly less personalized. Currently YouTube Music lets you opt in to use your precise location to recommend tunes. You might get different recommended playlists at the gym, at the office, in the park or at home. This is being discontinued September 26, and any YouTube Music data derived from your precise location will be deleted. You will get recommendations based on your general location (city or country), and you can select music based on your activity on the Home screen.

Blogging and Web Publishing

As I wrote about last week, Google Search is rolling out a “helpful content update” to help people find more helpful, original content in the search results. If you want to give Google feedback about the update, you can comment on this post in the Search Console help community or submit a feedback form.

Under new CEO Tony Stubblebine, Medium has been listening to user feature requests and announced several solid updates:

• Custom domains “back for good”. It’s noted the option was originally added in 2015, removed in 2018, added back in 2021, then removed again last May, which is some serious whiplash. Medium’s new stance: “You need to know that you can rely on the publishing tools we give you.”

• The post editor is coming back to the mobile Medium app

• They now have a straightforward reverse-chronological following feed.

Twitter’s recently-launched integrated blogging tool “Notes” has had a number of small improvements, including better margins and font sizes, more prominent author bio, and clearer error messages when someone tries to read a note from a location where they aren’t available. More info about notes.

Google Search Console has improved the Core Web Vitals report to show URL-level data.

Conferencing

Google Meet update: to briefly unmute yourself, hold down the space bar. Releasing the space bar mutes you again. This will be available starting September 9.

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: Tomatoes by Hans from Pixabay. Pixabay License, free for commercial use.