Peggy K's Creator Weekly
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Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube QR codes & hijacking support, Twitch collabs, Threads feeds

Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube QR codes & hijacking support, Twitch collabs, Threads feeds

Peggy K
August 24, 2024

I hope you are all enjoying waning days of summer! This week there are a bunch of updates for video creators, live streamers, bloggers and more.

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Top news and updates this week

Get a QR code to promote your YouTube channel
AI-powered chat support for hijacked YouTube accounts
What’s the difference between a creator, influencer and journalist?
YouTube affiliate shopping program is expanding their partnership with Shopify
YouTube’s Creator Music has added 30,000 songs
Your YouTube channel Home tab may be removed
Do tags, hashtags or file names matter to the YouTube algorithm?
Twitch launched video Stories
Twitch launched Drop Ins for Stream Together for live collabs
The FTC bans selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence such as followers, comments and views
TikTok lets you create a group chat with up to 32 people
Vimeo launches new AI features
Does Google Search care if you post a YouTube video and text with the same content?
Blogger is 25
Customize your Blogger RSS feeds
Medium is profitable and human powered
Use the Activity Pub plugin for WordPress for engagement
Threads adds a Media tab to profiles and list creation
Updates for Google Drive, Google Docs and Gmail
The Pixel 9 “Reimagine” tool is scary good
Procreate comes out strongly against generative AI
Some interesting reading, if you read to the end

Read on for details and additional updates!

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To Do & Try

Get a QR code to promote your YouTube channel. In the YouTube app tap “You” at bottom right > tap “Share” under your handle > select “QR code”. If you don’t see the “Share” chip, instead select “View channel” > tap the 3 dot menu icon at top right > select “Share” > select “QR code”. You can then download the image to your camera roll.
Capcut is running a YouTube Shorts creation contest where you can win $1000. You need to use CapCut to edit your Short, then post with the appropriate hashtags.See the link for details.

Get AI Chat Support for Hijacked Accounts

If you believe your YouTube channel has been hijacked, you may now be able to get AI-powered chat support. If you see unusual activity on your YouTube channel, start here. Note that this is currently only available in English.

If you lost access to your Google Account, the first step is account recovery. Recovery is much much easier if you have added a recovery email and phone number to your Google Account.

Right now go to the security settings for your Google Account (myaccount.google.com/security ) and run a security checkup. Make sure you have recovery options set!

Creator versus Influencer versus Journalist?

How would you define “creator”? Is a creator different from an “influencer”? And are journalists a separate category? Or do they overlap?

Two incidents this week suggest that those terms aren’t adequate.

The first was a serious misstep by Team Pixel, a program where Google sends Pixel devices to independent creators. In the latest version of the Team Pixel agreement, participants had to agree to not feature “competitor” mobile devices, or appear to prefer other devices over their Pixel. This was a new requirement, and it immediately took aback long-time participants.

Google’s sort-of apology added to the confusion: “"#TeamPixel is a distinct program, separate from our press and creator reviews programs. The goal of #TeamPixel is to get Pixel devices into the hands of content creators, not press and tech reviewers." And then they said that section of the agreement had “missed the mark” and would be removed.

But at least some of the Team Pixel “content creators” are tech reviewers, as those aren’t really distinct categories. From the outside, there’s no good way to tell if someone is an “influencer” posting essentially ad content or someone giving an honest review (although clearly #teampixel is a red flag).

The other story this week is that the Democratic National Convention (DNC) invited Instagram, YouTube and TikTok “influencers”, who had access to a special creator lounge, and were given assistance connecting with Democratic party leaders. Most seemed to be Harris supporters, and the program is meant to reach younger voters. But journalists working for traditional media felt pushed out.

It feels like brands and organizations only think of creators who aren’t part of a traditional media organization as part of their marketing. And independent creators who are doing serious reporting don’t have a good way to distinguish themselves from activists, commentators and other influencers who are mostly interested in making fun videos and swag.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that both “creator” and “influencer” don’t tell you anything about the person or the content they create.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube is expanding their partnership with Shopify, so that all eligible Shopify Plus and Advanced merchants in the US can sign up for the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program. This means that eligible creators (a channel in the YouTube Partner Program, at least 10,000 subscribers, not Made for Kids) can promote a wider variety of products. And creators can use the YouTube Shopping Chrome extension to easily tag products while browsing.

I got an email from YouTube that says Creator Music has added almost 30,000 more songs. You can find Creator Music in YouTube Studio here.

A reminder that your YouTube channel Home tab will be removed if you haven’t modified it, have less than 10 public videos, and have not published more than one content type. You can manually add it back if you do want a Home tab. Learn more.

There’s a new series of Shorts from the YouTube Creator Liaison: Do tags matter to the algorithm? Does the category matter to the algorithm? Does the filename matter to the algorithm? Tl;dw: Focus on your video title and description!

According to the latest Nielson report, YouTube is the first streaming platform with greater than 10% of US TV viewing. Netflix is the runner up at 8.4%, and other streaming platforms like Disney+, Max and Hulu have far less.

Twitch launched video Stories. Stories are posts that are only available up to 48 hours (creators can choose how long). Twitch affiliates and partners can post text, photos, clips, and now record or upload short videos. And the Stories are now available to view on desktop.

Twitch launched Drop Ins for Stream Together, which lets streamers “Knock” to ask another live streamer to collaborate. Knocking is only available for people who are streaming, not viewers, and streamers can choose who can Knock (anyone, channels you follow, partners, affiliates, or favorite channels). The streamer can choose to decline the Knock request. It isn’t possible to turn off, but it can be paused for a particular live stream.

Zach Bussey digs into whether karaoke is now banned on Twitch outside the DJ program. Watch the video.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, bad review suppression, and insider reviews. But what has people talking, is the prohibition against “selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence”, including buying followers, subscribers, shares, comments, reposts or views (aka viewbotting), for “a commercial purpose.” Does that include monetized YouTube or Twitch channels? Creators who are trying to get sponsors? That’s a bit unclear.

TikTok now lets you create a group chat of up to 32 people. There are muting and blocking tools, and teen safety features.

Vimeo shared a splashy overview of their Summer 2024 updates, including AI-generated caption translation, an "Ask AI" option to get information from your video, redesigned user homepage, improved screen recording with AI script generator and teleprompter, and updates to Events. Most of these features require a paid plan.

Beehiiv published a guide for streamers who want to start an email newsletter.

Web Publishers and Search

From this month’s Google SEO office hours: Could a YouTube video and the exact same text or content on the same webpage be flagged as duplicate content? Answer: the video version and text version are different content - and some people might prefer one format over the other. (watch the video)

If your blog or website in Google Search Console has pages listed as “Discovered - Currently not indexed”, it may be a quality issue. Google has tips to try to fix that.

Blogger is 25 this week. What I wrote for Blogger’s 20th birthday is still relevant: Blogger has an amazing history and it has the features I want to use. Also, don’t miss the jingle!

If you have (or read) a Blogger-hosted blog you can customize the RSS feeds. Why do that? You can then just see the posts you are interested in or use the custom feed in a posts widget. You can have a feed of a single label or search term or combine and exclude terms to create your feed. Blogger expert Adam explains here and has more details about how to combine terms here. Note that labels on Blogger are case sensitive!

Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine gave a “State of Medium” speech, emphasizing its human-curated recommendations and member funding, rather than ads. Some highlights:

This month (August) Medium is profitable for the first time, in part due to technical updates that cut costs significantly.
In April they reached 1 million paying members.
There’s a new Medium icon, with an M and part of an e.
More than 9,000 people have signed up for their verified book author program.
The Medium Partner Program is available in 77 new countries (for a total of 119 countries)
In all of 2023 Medium removed 1 million spam posts; last month they removed almost 10 million spam posts (!), driven by generative AI tools that spit out “digitally-assembled nonsense”.
Stubblebine is off X, finds Mastodon has the “deepest thinkers” (there is a Medium server) and Threads is best for self-promotion.
“A thing that’s coming is that every single publication on Medium will have more power to boost stories to their own audience.”

In the latest entry in WordPress Fediverse Files video series, Doc Pop interviews Matthias Pfefferle, developer of the Activity Pub for WordPress plugin, who explains how it can increase engagement on your blog and free it from social media’s limitations. Watch the interview.

Threads profiles now have a Media tab (at least in the mobile app) that lets you see only posts with images. Threads is directly connected to Instagram, so it has a lot of photographers and artists. This lets you see only their posts with “media”. (via Matt Navarra)

Threads is rolling out a “create feed” feature, which lets you create a feed from a list of accounts and search terms. I have been waiting for this!

Federated Threads accounts can now be followed in Flipboard.

You can now cross-post from Facebook and Instagram to Threads. Is it a good idea? That’s unclear.

On Instagram you can now add a song to your profile. And if you are thinking that has Myspace vibes, know that even Myspace Tom approves.

Lindsey Gamble reports that Instagram has more Shares metrics in Insights.

Is Instagram about friends? Or entertainment? Instagram head Adam Mosseri says it’s about talking to people who share interests.

Communication and Collaboration

Chrome is making it easier to access your passwords and addresses stored in your Google Account when switching between devices.

Google Drive is adding the option to email anyone (or everyone) who has access to a collaborative document.

Third parties can create smart chips for Google Docs. Some are now available from Lucidspark, Lucidchart and Zoho Projects.

Gemini in Gmail can now be used to “polish” a draft, and to help write and refine drafts in the mobile app. This requires a Gemini subscription.

Google Meet now supports ultra low latency in-organization live streaming to up to 100,000 viewers. This is limited to Google Workspace Enterprise accounts.

Meet meeting hosts can now control whether other meeting participants can share add-on activities. Add-ons include apps like Figma, Confluence, Lucidspark, Miro and Polly.

Zoom webinars can now have up to 1 million attendees. This requires a single-use license.

AI Updates and News

The new Magic Editor “Reimagine” tool on the Pixel 9 can make really realistic changes to your photos. Sarah Jeong at the Verge says “No one’s ready for this”. The images do include metadata indicating the AI editing, but that is bypassed by taking a screenshot.

Hank Green asks Is Google Training AI on YouTube Videos? (The answer is almost certainly “yes”)

Procreate, the iPad art and design app, came out strongly against AI: “Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future.” CEO James Cuda made an ever stronger statement, sharing a video where he says “I really f****** hate generative AI”. This has gotten a lot of positive feedback from artists.