Peggy K's Creator Weekly
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Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube Courses, StreamYard Plans, Tumblr & WordPress

Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube Courses, StreamYard Plans, Tumblr & WordPress

Peggy K
August 31, 2024

Labor Day weekend is the traditional end of summer here in the US. I plan to continue to enjoy the sunshine as it’s still not jacket weather here in California.

This week there are updates for YouTube, Twitch, Tumblr, Bluesky, Threads and more. Read on for details!

Top news and updates this week

Transfer playlists between Apple Music and YouTube Music.
Create a free business website with Solo.
YouTube expands Courses to more creators.
StreamYard launches new features and paid plans.
Tumblr is moving to WordPress.
YouTube is testing AI-generated comment topic summaries in more languages.
Twitch makes adjustments for Drop-Ins and DJ Chat Badges after unintended consequences.
Google Search now supports the AVIF image format.
X was banned in Brazil.
Bluesky added new anti-toxicity features.
SubClub lets you monetize Mastodon feeds.
Threads shows replies from the Fediverse.
Meta Spark is shutting down and 3rd party AR filters will be removed.
Instagram added creative text tools.
Google Meet automatically switches to PiP mode when you switch browser tabs.
Add automations to Google Chat using IFTTT.
Get information from academic textbooks in Google Gemini.

Read on for details and additional updates!

Creator Weekly Live 🔴
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To Do & Try

You can now transfer your playlists between Apple Music and YouTube Music. If you are switching services (or use both), give it a try. Transfer from Apple Music to YouTube Music OR from YouTube Music to Apple Music.

Mozilla’s Solo offers AI website creation for small businesses for free, and lets you link your custom domain for free, to be “disruptive” and “democratizing” creating your own website. Try it here.

YouTube Expands Courses

YouTube is launching the ability to offer multi-lesson Courses to more creators. Creator Insider has the scoop.

Here’s what constitutes a Course:

You can designate a playlist as a Course, just like you can designate a playlist as a Podcast.
You can create quizzes and associate them with specific videos in your Course. They will appear in the video description.
You have a Courses tab on your channel page (like the Playlists tab)
There is a Course playlist-level comment section, for discussion and community.
Viewers receive a badge for watching all videos
Create a new Course in YouTube Studio desktop only

You can see featured Courses at youtube.com/courses and learn how to take a course.

YouTube has not yet shared the eligibility requirements to create a Course.

StreamYard launches new features and new paid plans

In April the StreamYard live streaming platform was acquired by Bending Spoons, a company that has acquired a number of other apps and services, including Meetup, Evernote, WeTransfer, and Filmic Pro.

The company founders were let go, and it seemed likely that big changes were coming. And now they have.

StreamYard has added several new features and completely revamped their paid subscription tiers.

First, the new features for paid accounts:

Dark Mode: Dark mode is easier on the eyes.
4k local recordings: High quality high resolution video recording with separate tracks for each participant.
Reusable Studios: No need to create a new studio for repeated shows.
Camera shapes: Your camera feed can be a circle or square or rectangle with rounded corners.
1080p Screen Share: Previously maximum screen share resolution was 720p.

StreamYard had six different paid plans. Those are now being consolidated into three paid tiers: Core (Essential, Starter and Basic will move to this tier), Advanced (Professional plan will move to this tier), and Teams (Premium and Growth plans will move to this tier). The Free and Business customers will remain on their current plan.

The transition will take place over the next month, to be completed by September 28.

There’s a feature comparison here, including which plans include the new features.

When Bending Spoons took over, one of my concerns was that they would raise prices. The pricing of these new plans isn’t clear yet, as I’m currently still seeing the old plans (with Basic at $20/month and Professional at $39/month). It’s interesting that prices are only available when logged into your account, suggesting that different users see different prices.

Tumblr moving to WordPress

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019, and since then has been focused on increasing revenue, while adding a few new features like Communities and threaded replies.

In December, amidst rumors that Tumblr might shut down, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced that they would be downsizing the team working on the platform.

So it wasn’t too surprising that Automattic announced they would be moving the Tumblr backend to WordPress. They say that from the outside, you shouldn’t even notice a difference. But this will make it easier (and probably more cost effective) to maintain and update the platform.

This should also allow Fediverse integration, which is already available for WordPress blogs.

Automattic says:

This won’t be easy. Tumblr hosts over half a billion blogs. We’re talking about one of the largest technical migrations in internet history. Some people think it’s impossible. But we say, “challenge accepted.”

They are looking for experienced programmers to join their team.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

You can now mark your AI-generated videos as “Altered Content” during upload in the YouTube Studio app and YouTube mobile app. More details from Creator Insider.

YouTube is now testing AI-generated comment topic summaries in all languages supported by YouTube comments, rather than just English.

Tubefilter reports that YouTube’s AI-powered live chat sometimes gets it very wrong.

Watch a deep conversation on storytelling and studio building with Kinigra Deon and Alan Chikin Chow on the Creator Insider YouTube channel.

File this under unintended consequences: Last week Twitch launched Drop-Ins, which let a streamer drop in on another streamer to collaborate. When the partnered streamer accepted the drop-in, it turned on the webcam of both collaborators. It turns out this is a problem for Vtubers, who don’t make their real-life identities public. This week Twitch announced that cameras will now be turned off when a drop-in is accepted, which should fix that problem.

Twitch has removed the DJ Chat Badge from non-Affiliate or Partner accounts in live chat. Anyone can opt in to the DJ Program, and apparently this badge was “abused by bots and bad actors in order to appear more credible.” The DJ icon will continue to appear on the Channel Page for those accounts.

Twitch recommends adding social links to your profile, because “If you add social links, we’ll automatically tag your handle if you or your viewers share clips to YouTube or TikTok!” (via Zach Bussey)

TikTok now lets you set how much you want to see of various topics in your For You feed.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search now supports the AVIF image format, which means they will be indexed. AVIF is based on the open source AV1 video codec, and can have animation, transparency and higher quality images at smaller file sizes. It’s supported in all major browsers.

X was banned in Brazil (see the link for the details) and Bluesky is reportedly seeing a huge influx of new Brazilian users.

Bluesky added new “anti-toxicity” features, including the ability to detach your original post from someone’s quote post, hiding replies to your post, opting to only receive notifications from people you follow, improved display of replies in the timeline, and applying blocks to lists (if you block a list-creator you’ll be filtered out of lists they create).

SubClub (sub.club) is a new service for Mastodon and ActivityPub that lets users create paid subscription feeds in the Fediverse. It’s from the same company that makes the Mammoth app for Mastodon, and is not only useful for paid feeds, but also for donations to support ActivityPub instances. The platform takes a 6% cut. You can join the beta today. Their API lets TechCrunch has the story. FAQ on how SubClub works.

If you are interested in a deeper dive into the Fediverse, see this WVFRM Podcast episode that compares Threads/ActivityPub and Bluesky/AT Protocol: Protocol Wars - The Fediverse Explained!

Friendica will let you follow Mastodon, Threads (and other ActivityPub profiles), BlueSky accounts and RSS feeds (blogs, YouTube channels), all in one place. A review from Elena Rossini.

Threads now shows replies from the Fediverse on everyone’s posts (who have Fediverse sharing enabled). See Mosseri’s post that currently has 277 Fediverse replies from 145 Servers. You can like the replies on Threads, but can’t reply to the replies there yet.

Threads now lets you rearrange the Tweetdeck-like pinned columns on the desktop site.

Meta is shutting down its Meta Spark platform in January 2025, which let 3rd party creators and businesses share Augmented Reality (AR) effects. At that time, 3rd party AR effects will no longer be available on Instagram, Facebook, or Messenger. Videos and Stories that used those effects while they were available will not be affected. Needless to say, creators who created AR filters in Meta Spark aren’t happy.

Instagram just added new “creative text tools”, including new fonts, text animations and effects. These are available for Reels, Stories, and Posts (via stickers).

Instagram is reportedly adding the option to post visible comments on Stories (rather than DMs).

Lindsey Gamble reports that you can now edit the content and time of scheduled posts on LinkedIn.

Communication and Collaboration

In a nice update, Google Meet meetings now automatically switch to picture-in-picture mode when you switch browser tabs so you don’t lose track of your meeting. This requires using the Chrome browser.

The AI-powered “Take Notes for Me” feature in Google Meet is rolling out. It gives a “summary so far” to late meeting-joiners, saves meeting notes to Google Drive and sends an email with a recap after the meeting. This is available with Gemini Enterprise, Gemini Education Premium and the Google Workspace AI Meetings & Messaging add-on.

Google Meet will now send a single email with meeting artifacts, including recordings, transcripts, Gemini Notes, and live streams.

You can now add automations to Google Chat using IFTTT. This allows automatic posting with actions from email, social sites (Facebook, X, Discord, Slack), Google Drive, Calendar and more.

In the Gmail app for Android, you can now reply directly to an email at the bottom of the message, without a new screen opening. This will be available for iOS devices later this year. Google Workspace Labs beta testers may not see this feature.

Also in Gmail for Android (and soon for iOS), Gmail Q&A is a new option to ask Gemini questions about your inbox and specific emails. This requires a Google One AI Premium account or Gemini for Google Workspace.

Do people want this? Microsoft launches an AI-powered copy-and-paste tool. Here's how you can use it

AI Updates and News

Free academic textbook platform OpenStax is partnering with Google Gemini so that you can ask Gemini to pull information directly from textbooks. All you need to do is enable OpenStax in your Gemini extensions, then mention @OpenStax when prompting Gemini. Also new for Gemini Advanced subscribers: upload 10 documents to create a study guide or answer questions (NotebookLM is similar, and free), create “Gems” (custom AI experts, like a “learning coach” or “writing editor”, learn more). And Google Workspace users can upload more file types.

Google is upgrading its image generation model in Gemini to Imagen 3.

Ahead of the US Elections, Google restricts responses to election-related queries in Gemini, Search AI Overviews, YouTube AI-generated Live Chat summaries, Gems and Gemini image generation, as “this new technology can make mistakes”.

Why AI can't tell you how many “Rs” are in “strawberry”