Happy Mother’s Day weekend to all you moms out there!

This week’s top updates: You can Live Redirect to someone else’s live stream or Premiere on YouTube; Google, Apple and Microsoft are working towards a passwordless future; Facebook is (mostly) ditching audio content; Twitter is testing Circle posting (+1!) and more.

There are also a number of security how-tos for anyone who needs to keep their internet activity private, or doesn’t want their location tracked, or is attending a protest. And yes, it’s related to the leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion on the legaity of abortion.

Read on for details.

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Events

Google I/O begins May 11. The virtual conference is totally free. You can see the program here. Derrek Lee at Android Central speculates about what he expects will be presented, but there is sure to be more (and no guarantee everything he mentions will be included).

YouTube and Video

YouTube launched Live Redirect this week. When your livestream ends, you can send your viewers to a different livestream or Premiere, even on someone else’s channel. If you are a Twitch user, this is like a raid. To send a Live Redirect to another channel, you must have at least 1000 subscribers. The destination channel can have any number of subs, so this can be a nice way to boost a smaller channel’s audience. The default setting is to allow Live Redirects from any channel you subscribe to (as long as your subscriptions are public), but you can switch to manually adding channels for Live Redirect in your Community Settings in YouTube Studio.

YouTube Product Manager for YouTube Studio shared features they are working on, including improvements to YouTube Studio mobile, automatic suggestions for titles, hashtags, and other metadata, and AB testing of thumbnails. Watch the video. And in the announcements this week, you can now see key moments for audience retention in the mobile YouTube Studio app.

YouTube is discontinuing its lightweight YouTube Go app in August. The app was launched in 2016, designed for lower-end phones in places where internet connectivity might be spotty. YouTube says the main YouTube app now performs better in those environments, and gives users features like commenting, posting and dark theme.

Was your YouTube channel hacked or suspended? If so you need to watch this video on how to get assistance by @subversiveasset. He has helped many many people get their hijacked channels back as a volunteer YouTube Product expert in the official YouTube help community and he knows what he's talking about. You can post your issue to the YouTube help forum here. (Note that there is no guarantee your channel can be restored, but this is your best chance)

Pinterest launched a live streaming mobile app called Pinterest TV Studio. It currently is only available to select creators.

TikTok is selling ads on the top 4% of its videos, and they will be revenue sharing with creators who have more than 100,000 followers.

SuperBam's Wally Weilbaecher explains why you shouldn't ask people to subscribe to your channel. Instead point viewers to your other videos. Will that make the algorithm happy? Maybe so.

Web creators

Google is deprecating some Image and Video sitemap tags and attribute. If you use those on your site, you will want to review the changes and possibly update your site code. Note that Google continues to support the IPTC metadata format for image rights information.

Search Engine Land has a useful set of tips for using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for SEO research.

Google Search Central has 5 tips for optimizing your images for ecommerce sites. Watch the video.

Social Media

Facebook is moving away from audio content. Starting in June, podcasters will no longer be able to upload content, rolling Clubhouse-like Live Audio Rooms into Facebook Live, and discontinuing the Audio hub it launched last October. Facebook played with audio for about a year, before moving on, presumably to the “metaverse”.

Do you miss Google+ Circles? Twitter is testing its own version. Your (one) Circle can have up to 150 people. When you Tweet, you can choose to limit your audience to just that one Circle. Only the person who created the Circle can see who is in it. There is no indication of when this will be generally available.

Hosts and co-hosts of Twitter Spaces are gaining access to more analytics, including total live listeners, total replays and speakers.

LinkedIn is trying to improve your feed. You can click the 3 dot icon on any post to indicate you want less from that person or topic and if you are in the US you can choose to see less political content. LinkedIn is also trying to improve feed relevance by showing more targeted activity from your network, new ways to follow people outside your network, fewer polls from people you don’t know, reducing content that asks for likes or engagement, and better policy enforcement.

The HootSuite blog has some suggestions for using Instagram’s Collab posts.

Communication

Google Chat’s Spaces are rolling out the ability for Managers to add Space descriptions and guidelines. This feature was announced in February.

Chat Space Managers can also delete posts created by others in some Google Workspace editions. This is only available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, Education Standard, and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade.

Google Meet’s Companion Mode now lets you share your video feed. Companion Mode is designed to let participants in a meeting room join a Meet meeting as an individual to access captions, polls, hand raising and other features.

Security and Privacy

In a step towards a passwordless future, the Fido Alliance announced that Google, Apple and Microsoft will be implementing multi-device FIDO credentials in their devices over the coming year. What that means is that all you need to do to sign in to supported websites (like, say, your bank) is unlock your phone while nearby the computer you are using to sign in to the site. And you will be able to access your passkey on multiple devices, meaning you don’t need to re-enroll when you switch phones. If you want to see how passwordless accounts work, Microsoft has let people remove the password from their account since last September.

SafeGraph is a location data broker. What that means is that it collects data from multiple sources, including the apps you use on your mobile phone. One set of data it sells is data from people in a particular census tract, and the locations those people have visited. The data is cheap and anyone can purchase it, which is problematic. A number of US states poised to criminalize abortions, this is data that can be used to track who visited an abortion clinic. In response to criticisms, SafeGraph has removed “family planning centers” from the types of businesses it sells data for.

But it’s ultimately hard to know how the data generated just by carrying around your phone may be used. Google has banned SafeGraph and other location data companies from apps in the Play Store in 2021, but it is unknown how many apps (especially older ones) may still share tracking data.

The EFF has digital security and privacy tips for people involved in abortion access and The Verge explains how to secure your phone before going to a protest. The recommendations are useful for anyone who has a special need to keep their online activities private.

Productivity

Google Docs tables are now smarter. There are special “chips” you can select from a drop-down menu to set the Project Status and Review Status for table entries.

If you use Google Tasks, you’ll be glad to know that you can now set the end date for a recurring task inside Google Tasks itself, rather than having to use Google Calendar.

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That’s all the updates for this week! Stay safe out there.

Image: Dahlia by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay. Free for commercial use, no attribution required.