Happy (almost) May!

This week there are a bunch of updates for YouTubers, including Super Thanks for most Partners, a new Research tab in YouTube Analytics, new advertiser friendly guidelines for kids content and more.

Beyond that, the big news this week is that Elong Musk bought Twitter, although the implications of that aren’t clear (Musk talks a lot, but it’s hard to know what he’s serious about, or what he actually plans to do).

Read and comment at peggyktc.com. Otherwise, read on for details

Events

If country music is your jam, watch the Stagecoach music festival live on YouTube this weekend. Check out the official Stagecoach Festival music channel.

To learn more about Google products and services sign up for these free virtual conferences:

• May 4: Google Workspace Summit

• May 11-12: Google I/O

This Week's Updates

YouTube and Video

Super Thanks is now available to most channels in the YouTube Partner Program. Enable Super Thanks on the “Supers” tab in your monetization settings in YouTube Studio. Viewers can then tip $2 to $50 along with a customized comment on your video. Get more details on how to set up Super Thanks, and, if you are a viewer, how to purchase Super Thanks.

Use the new Research Tab in YouTube Analytics to discover search terms your audience is using and top searches across YouTube. Keep an eye out for “content gaps” where viewers can’t find engaging videos for those specific search terms.

YouTube Partners making content for kids should read the newly updated advertiser-friendly content guidelines. “Inappropriate kids content” includes content that encourages negative behavior, mature content aimed at kids, and shocking content aimed at kids.

YouTube’s Trusted Flaggers program is shifting to no longer include individual Trusted Flaggers. They instead will be working exclusively with NGOs and government agencies. YouTube has also increasingly relied on automated systems to flag violative content. By the end of 2021 92% of removed content was first flagged automatically, mostly before the videos had even received 10 views.

YouTube does still want individual reports, and so are trying to improve the flagging experience for everyone. For example, they now send an email notice to let you know a video your flagged was removed. It’s not set up so that you can flag lots of videos at once, but it is an improvement for single video reports.

Monetizing YouTube Creators will be able to run through pre-publish checks for copyright claims and advertiser friendliness issues when uploading video in the YouTube mobile app. More information from Creator Insider.

TikTok is celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander Month by celebrating API creators and special API music playlists.

Social Media

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, with the sale closing by the end of the year. Musk is not only a super rich dude with big ideas - he’s also a gleeful Twitter troll. The purchase seems personal. So what does this mean? Casey Newton has a good overview of what happened.

What does this mean for Twitter in the short term? There is a freeze on product changes, fluctuation in user counts (right wing users gained followers, while folks more on the left lost significant followers), concern about Musk’s track record quashing speech he doesn’t like and his recent denigration of Twitter’s current employees (which unleashed a flood of abuse on them), and signs that Musk doesn’t really understand the limitations of the platform. How this will play out in the long term is anyone’s guess.

Reddit announced the opening of their Community Funds Program. They are pledging a total of $1 million for projects needing $1000-$50,000. Projects will be selected for funding based on “creativity, feasibility and community impact”. During their initial trial, funded projects included a r/askhistorians digital conference and a community-designed billboard in Times Square. The next round of nominations opens in June, so now is the time for subreddits to come up with a cool idea to be funded.

Instagram is hosting a special pre-Mother’s Day live shopping event on May 4th. Live shopping is one of the latest trends on social media, with YouTube, Pinterest,Twitter, and Tiktok launching events in the past six months. Only Insta is celebrating Mother’s Day with shopping this year, but I’d expect more events across social sites as more creators get access to this feature.

Privacy and Safety

You can now request removal of more types of personal information from the Google Search results, including your personal contact information, such as your phone number, email or physical address.

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides will now show a warning banner for potentially malicious or dangerous files.

Productivity

Google has updated the menus in Google Docs to make features easier to find.

Google Workspace has a quick tip showing you how to download your Google Doc as a shareable PDF.

More

Noto Emoji is a new free font made up of simplified monotone emoji. Both the color and the weight of the emoji characters can be set. While some are just a line drawing of the current emoji, all the people emoji are now the old-fashioned blobs. I love those guys! Download and install Noto Emoji on your website.

AI and machine learning isn’t easy: hundreds of predictive tools were developed to try to help during the pandemic, but none of them helped and some of them were actually harmful. “Incorrect assumptions about the data often meant that the trained models did not work as claimed.”

Evan Speigel, CEO of Snap, is betting augmented reality is what people want, rather than an entirely virtual metaverse:: “Our fundamental thesis and our big bet is on the real world, and that people really enjoy spending time together in reality. And that computing can really enhance that, [and] make that more fun and contribute to shared experiences.”

Image: Maypole tree image by Sanyibanyi from Pixabay. Free for commercial use, no attribution required.