Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube Playlist Collabs, Adobe AI Tools, Instagram Updates

Author

Peggy K
October 19, 2024

Hi all! This week YouTube announced a bunch of updates for viewers, Adobe announced Firefly video and other tools, camera updates for the latest Android and specifically Pixel phones, plus updates for Instagram, Threads, X and a lot more.

During last week’s live stream, I tried something new. There’s a segment on understanding YouTube Analytics revenue data, based on a question from viewer and reader Braylen. Check it out here and let me know what you think? Should I answer more questions? Do you have a question? You can post a comment or reply to this newsletter to let me know.

Top news and updates this week

  • You can now upload your longer YouTube Shorts

  • New YouTube features: improved collaborative playlists, Badges, immersive channel pages on TV, and more. 

  • YouTube “captured with a camera” label for unedited video. 

  • Updates from Adobe MAX for Firefly Video, Premiere, Photoshop and more. Yes, lots of AI. 

  • New Android and Pixel Camera features: Low light boost, astrophotography, Magic Audio Eraser and more. 

  • Save multiple YouTube Shorts draft videos. 

  • Google has a new head of Search. 

  • More on the Automattic/Matt Mullenweg/WordPress vs. WP Engine dispute. 

  • Bing Webmaster Tools adds Recommendations, 16 months of Search Performance data and is testing Copilot AI. 

  • The Internet Archive is back online. 

  • On Instagram carousels with more than one image or video may show as Reels. 

  • Instagram lets you create a customizable digital profile card to share. 

  • Threads now shows your activity status by default (but you can turn it off). 

  • X updated its terms to make clearer that they will use your posts for AI training and is changing blocking so that the blocked person can see your posts. 

  • There’s lot more to read and watch if you read to the end.

Read on for details and additional updates!

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
What do you think about this week’s updates? Join the live Creator Weekly on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (5:30PM UTC). 

Take this week’s quiz ✅
What do you know about the early history of blogging? Hint: watch last week’s OnEBoard Chat to the end for the answer.

To Do & Try

New YouTube Viewer Features

YouTube announced a bunch of new features aimed mostly at video viewers: 

  • New and improved collaborative playlists: Share with a link or (on TVs) QR code, upload a custom thumbnail (or generate one with AI on mobile), and (coming later this year) people can upvote and downvote items in a playlist. These updates will be available on mobile, web, TV and YouTube Music.

  • Earn Badges for “unique-to-YouTube milestones” like being the first Member of a channel, getting quiz questions right, getting a heart on a comment or being the top listener to an artist. This will be available in the next few weeks on the “You” tab in the YouTube mobile app or YouTube Music app.

  • Immersive channel pages on TV. When viewing a channel a video starts playing immediately, giving a teaser of the channel content.

  • Improved miniplayer in the YouTube mobile app. You can move and resize the miniplayer as you browse YouTube for more videos.

  • Set a Sleep Timer to automatically pause videos after a set amount of time. This is available on the web and mobile app. Learn more.

  • Finer tuned playback speed in 0.25x increments (for example, set playback to 1.75x for almost, but not quite, double speed).

  • Visual updates (like “pops of pink” and “dynamism”) coming to web, mobile and TVs. 

  • Interact with content while watching Shorts on TV.

Watch Creator Insider Release notes for a look at these new features.

What am I most excited about? 

  • The collaborative playlists have potential to not only be a fun way to share with family and friends, but a new way to connect with viewers. 

  • Since the badges are only visible to you, they may get viewers excited without the usual gaming of the numbers when there are public leaderboards.

  • I feel like I need to start visiting channels on TV to see what that looks like. I do watch videos on my TV, but rarely view channel pages there.

YouTube Supports “Captured with a camera” C2PA Label

YouTube has launched support for C2PA Content Credentials for “authentic, unedited video”. The new “How this content was made” section of the description will show “this content was captured using a camera or other recording device.” 

C2PA (The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) is an open standard for identifying the source of media content, and is supported by Adobe, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Truepic and other big companies. 

For this designation you need to use recording devices or software that support the standard to create your video, and you need to avoid edits that break the chain of provenance.

This is not supported by the camera apps that come with current mobile devices. If the label is important to you, you’ll have to invest in a complaint camera.

Adobe Updates AI Tools, Editing Features and Web-Based Editing

This week at Adobe MAX, Adobe announced a number of updates to its core software.

  • Adobe Firefly Video with Generative Extend (to extend the length of clips) and text-to-video and image-to-video.

  • Premiere has a new color management system, context-aware properties panels, AI Generative Extend, a new design and faster performance.

  • Photoshop AI tools, including a Distraction Removal tool (remove wires or people or other objects), Generative Workspace (for brainstorming), Adobe Firefly Image 3 Model powered tools (Generative Fill, Generative Expand, Generate Similar and Generate background)

  • Illustrator updates that make objects easier to move around, convert graphics to vectors, and AI-Generative Shape Fill.

  • Adobe Express has new features aimed at businesses, including branding and collaboration tools.

Adobe emphasizes that their Firefly Video and Image Models are “commercially safe and ethically trained.

Of course there was a lot more than I’ve listed here, so it’s worth following the links for full details if you are using Adobe creative tools.

Bonus: An interesting session from AdobeMAX: Expanding Creative Possibilities with Photoshop on Chrome

(There are more Adobe MAX sessions available on demand).

New Android and Pixel Camera and Productivity Features

This week Android 15 started rolling out and there was a “Pixel drop”, with new features exclusive to Pixel devices. You can visit the links to see all the updates, but here are a few highlights: 

  • Low Light Boost for your camera works better in low light conditions (this can be used by third party apps). This is an Android 15 update.

  • Third party apps have more camera control, such as precise flash control. This is also an Android 15 update.

  • Night Sight for Instagram adds Night Sight low light photography to the Instagram app camera on Pixel 6 and newer phones.

  • Astrophotography improvements in Night Sight mode in the Camera on Pixel 6 and newer phones.

  • Magic Audio Eraser, which lets you remove background noise from videos (like wind or crowds), is now available on Pixel 8 or newer phones. 

  • Improved underwater photos and videos on the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro.

  • On Pixel tablets and foldables you can pin and unpin the taskbar to the screen, and if you use app pairing to view two apps at once, you can save your favorite app combinations to the home screen.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is testing AI-generated comment reply suggestions in the creator’s “own tone and style”. If you are in the test, you will see this option in the YouTube Studio Comments or Community section or on the YouTube mobile app. These don’t post automatically, and can be edited.

The YouTube Shorts editor now lets you view multiple saved drafts, and select the one you want to continue working on. Learn more from Creator Insider.

StreamYard is working on a new feature called “Scenes”, where you can set up combinations of overlays and banners or assign media or guests before your live stream starts. The Restream live streaming platform already has this feature, and it’s pretty useful.

Google Search has a new leader. A few months ago, Ed Zitron’s article “The man who killed Google Search” was making the rounds (do read it!). The villain of the piece is Prabhakar Raghavan, formerly head of Ads, and later head of Search, whose expertise is described as “primarily … failing up, ascending through the ranks of technology on the momentum from the explosions he caused”.
This week Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Raghavan would be taking a “big leap” in his career to Google’s Chief Technologist, where he will provide general “technical direction and leadership”. That sounds a bit like falling up, doesn’t it? Nick Fox (who has lead a number of teams at Google, including communications, Hangouts, and Google Fi) will be the new lead of “Knowledge & Information” (Search, Ads, Geo & Commerce). 

Blogger Product Expert Adam explains how to deal with spam on your Blogger blog.

So it’s been a few weeks now, since the Automattic/Matt Mullenweg/WordPress dispute with WPEngine became public (see last week’s updates). You may or may not be surprised that this has not died down. Some highlights -- or lowlights -- from this past week: 

Looking in from the outside, it seems a real problem that the WordPress Foundation is not an independent entity, and that WordPress (dot) org, the default repository for themes, plugins and other resources, is Matt Mullenweg’s personal website. Litigation against Mullenweg and Automattic should not be treated as an “attack” on WordPress itself.

The Squarespace website builder and hosting platform has been acquired by a private equity company. I wouldn’t be surprised if their first move is to raise prices. Not great for people who moved to Squarespace when they acquired Google Domains.

Microsoft is testing Copilot AI into Bing Webmaster tools, to “empower webmasters with instant, accurate, and contextually relevant answers to their queries.”

Bing Webmaster Tools has added “Recommendations”, with “personalized and actionable insights.”

And in a third update Bing Webmaster Tools now offers 16 months of Search Performance data, which is much more useful that the previous 6 months of data.

Beehiiv has a new option to monetize newsletters with CPM ads. This requires a paid account.

Finally the Internet Archive, which was taken down by a denial of service attack and hacked, is back online, hopefully with improved security. Some features, like saving a web page, are still not available.  

Photos and Image Design

If you have an inactive Photobucket account, the company wants you to sign in. But there’s a catch: you have to pay for a monthly subscription and agree to have any of your photos with faces used for AI training. The alternative? You can delete your account without signing in.

Social Media

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says that a carousel will have further reach than a single image. Why? More items means more potential interactions. And if someone views the first image or video and don’t swipe, Instagram may show the second piece of media to that viewer. Also, if you use music on your Instagram carousel post (up to 20 images + videos), it is eligible to be shown in the Reels tab.

Instagram now lets you add songs to your linked Spotify library.

Instagram introduced a customizable digital profile card with a QR code that you can share to promote your Insta account. You can get the card by clicking the “share profile” option on your profile in the mobile app.

Threads will now show your activity status, with a green dot on your profile photo if you are online. You can turn this off in your privacy settings, or limit visibility to people who follow you that you follow back.

X updated its terms of service to explicitly state that if you accept the terms X may use what you post for AI training. X is not currently using European user data. Everyone can opt out of having interactions with X’s Grok AI used for training.

X is also changing the way blocking works, so that someone you block can see your public posts. The reason seems to be to prevent people from blocking someone, then sharing private or mean information about them. That’s a bit odd, because it doesn’t actually match why anyone I know blocks people. It is usually because you don’t want to see the blocked person’s posts or comments, or because the blocked person is stalking or harassing, and so it helps that they can’t easily see your postings. X posts aren’t easily visible to non-signed-in users, as profiles display posts in non-chronological order. Of course the chatter is that X-owner Elon Musk wants to see what his exes are posting about him. 

And not surprisingly, the changes at X  have resulted in a new surge of Bluesky signups. If you’re new Bluesky has an orientation thread.

Unfollow accounts to improve your mood. A recent study shows that unfollowing accounts that post hostility, hyperpartisan views, and low quality information can improve your feelings of well being and decrease animosity.

Communication and Collaboration

Google Workspace users can set their pronouns in their Google Account settings. Now those pronouns will appear on your video tile during Meet meetings.

Meta Workplace will be shut down starting September 1, 2025. You can download your data, or migrate to a different platform. Meta’s “preferred migration partner” is Workvivo by Zoom. But you can also migrate your data to Google Chat, using CloudFuze. (CloudFuze also offers a Slack to Chat migration option).

Microsoft Teams has a new background effect that turns transparent PNG images (like a company logo on a transparent background) into translucent “frosted glass”. 

More AI Updates and News

Google also rearranged its internal AI teams, so that the Gemini app team joined the DeepMind team; the Assistant team joined Platforms & Devices, so they can “sit closer to the product surfaces they’re building for”. 

Google Workspace customers with a Gemini add-on for business or education, can use Gemini on the side panel of Docs, Sheets, Gmail and Drive in seven new languages: German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and French.

Victoria Strauss @ Writer Beware: Dear Author, Are You Human? Certifying Authenticity 

More Reading (and watching)

The Verge has a great feature looking back on 2004, that captures the look of each platform. 20 years ago Facebook launched, Gmail launched, podcasts and blogging became a thing, and a lot more. That was the peak transition from printed to digital photos, and many of those have gone missing. At the time it felt like there was so much excitement and promise for the web. I can’t believe that was a generation ago.
They have a bonus quiz: did it happen in 2004 or 2024? 

Earnest Pettie: How to deal with the feeling of too many “trends”. He writes that “the key is in embracing the Internet as being a part of the real world, a place we live rather than a place we consume, which will help you see all of these things as more than just discourse and entertainment.”

Thanks for reading! 🌼