Peggy K's Creator Weekly
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Peggy K's Creator Weekly: New YouTube features, TwitchCon updates, Substack live streaming

Peggy K's Creator Weekly: New YouTube features, TwitchCon updates, Substack live streaming

Peggy K
September 21, 2024

Autumn is my favorite season. We usually have sunny weather with just a bit of crisp coolness, the leaves start changing color, and the year starts to wind down. 🍂 It’s a nice time to work on projects before the hustle of the Christmas and New Year holidays. Either that, or take a nice hike!

This week both YouTube and Twitch shared their roadmap for the coming months, with new features for creating, monetizing and building community.

Plus there are updates from Substack, Discord, Threads, Google Workspace and more.

Read on the web.

Top news and updates this week

Google Gemini can now interact with Keep and Tasks.
New features coming to YouTube: Communities, Hype Leaderboards, Gifts powered by Jewels, Seasons & Episodes, automatic dubbing, updated Inspiration Tab, AI effects and more.
YouTube Partners may need to update their US Tax Forms in AdSense before the end of the year.
TwitchCon announcements: Mobile app updates, Clips, Shared Chat in Stream Together, vertical live streams, Hype monetization, more transparent Community Guidelines enforcement, Guilds and Creator Clubs.
Substack launches live streaming to subscribers.
New look for Google Calendar embeds.
Patreon has new discovery and monetization options.
Add up to 20 images in a Threads post.
LinkedIn lets you opt out of having your data used for AI training.
If you have a Pixel 9 Pro Fold you can use both front and back cameras simultaneously in your next Meet video chat.
Discord has end-to-end encryption for video and audio calls.
Google Slides supports multiple monitors.
Google Calendar lets you add birthdays directly.
Save passkeys to Google Password Manager on desktop to sync across devices.
More reading (and watching) from across the web.

Read on for more!

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 YouTube’s new Hype feature?

To Do & Try

If you are interested in using Google Gemini AI for your business, join the Gemini at Work digital event on September 24.

9to5Google reports that Gemini for web is finally adding Keep and Tasks to extensions. To access, make sure you have enabled Google Workspace extensions in the Gemini settings. Then start a new chat, and type @ to see your options. Gemini can create new Keep notes, based on your conversation, add to lists, or reference notes to find information or create in the chat. You can have Gemini add reminders or tasks and check and update tasks.
For example, you use the following prompt: <Take a photo of a list of things> Add the items from this image to my to-dos for [time, date]. This is the kind of thing I want my AI assistant to do!

Made On YouTube Announcements

This week was YouTube’s annual “Made on YouTube” event, which they use to announce big features that they are working on.

I’ve written up a detailed overview of all the announcements, including when they should be available. Here is the list:

Communities is a space on your channel where fans can post and chat. Imagineyour own little Discord or Subreddit, right on YouTube. This is currently being tested with a small number of channels, and is only available on mobile. You can join communities on Bake with Shivesh (baking), Mogswamp (gaming), and Sydney Cummings Houdyshell (fitness).
Community Hub in the YouTube Studio app replaces the Comments tab. This will still have comments with advanced AI smart replies (in your style), and highlight key commenters and audience metrics.
Hype Leaderboards will let fans help promote your videos. Fans can “hype” recent videos on channels with 500-500,000 subscribers, and the top hyped videos will appear on a leaderboard. Smaller channels will get a boost to be competitive.
Gifts powered by Jewels are digital gifts sent by fans during vertical livestreams, purchased with Jewels. Jewels are purchased with real money. Creators should get a revenue cut from this, but no details are currently available.
YouTube Shopping affiliate program is expanding to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
You can organize your content into seasons and episodes, to make it more accessible when watched on a TV.
AI-powered automatic dubbing into multiple languages, from English to Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French, or from those languages back to English.
Updated Inspiration tab in YouTube with AI-generated detailed video outlines, thumbnails and titles. This will eventually be able to essentially put together together an entire video, including the “hook” at the beginning of the video to capture viewer attention. Will it be good? We’ll see.
Effect Maker is a web-based tool for creating YouTube Shorts effects.
GenAI Puppeteering turns you into a superhero or other figure that “moves with you”.
AI-generated video clips and backgrounds with Google’s latest text-to-video model Veo in the YouTube Shorts editor.

Most of these features will not be widely available until 2025 (which is just a few months from now!).

TwitchCon Announcements

TwitchCon San Diego was this week, and Twitch CEO Dan Clancey shared the company’s product roadmap.

Updating the Mobile App

Twitch’s new mobile app was designed with new and casual viewers in mind, which isn’t great for dedicated viewers. They have made some changes, like making it easier to find your followed channels, with more updates to the Following tab to come:

Easier access to followed categories (coming in October)
Thumbnails on followed channels (coming in October)
Resume watching video on demand (VODs) from recently watched streams (coming in October)
Filter the feed by category or collection (“in the coming months”)

Easier to find and share Clips

Clip Carousel, highlighting the best clips from your most recent stream, available immediately after your stream.
Search and filter Clips by title, creator or creation date.
Create portrait clips on mobile, with more export options (more info).
They are “working on ways to alert you when a clip is created”.

Shared Chat in Stream Together

Stream Together lets creators collaborate on a stream. The stream is broadcast to all of the participants’ channels.

Twitch is launching Shared Chat. When up to 6 creators Stream Together, their live chats can be combined into a single chat for everyone. Streamers can tell which messages were posted from their own community.

Shared Chat will roll out next week.

Enhanced Broadcasting

Twitch, OBS, and NVIDIA launched Enhanced Broadcasting in January. This lets streamers broadcast in three different resolutions simultaneously. Starting in 2025, the maximum resolution using Enhanced Broadcasting will be upgraded to 1440p (2K).

Vertical Live Streams

Twitch will enable simultaneous streaming in vertical and landscape orientation, starting next year.

Hype

A new monetization and engagement feature, likely available later this year, was designed for mobile, but available on desktop:

We’re working on a new monetization feature that will allow viewers to react to a moment on stream with an emotion or a sentiment like a laugh or a heart, and rally the rest of the community to join in the fun with a single tap. Similar to Hype Train, every contribution, big or small, will keep the momentum going, and the celebration growing.

Community Guidelines Enforcement

Two improvements to community guidelines enforcement are coming:

For violations in Chat, they will share an excerpt where the violation occurred. Eventually they will also provide a clip to let you review the violation.
Starting early next year, some strikes will expire.

Guilds and Creator Clubs

Twitch has networking groups based on identity and interests.

Black Guild, Women’s Guild, and the Hispanic and Latin Guild will expand globally in 2025. The new LGBTQIA+ Pride Guild will also be available globally. Affiliates and Partners can apply to join.
New Creator Clubs for Artists/Makers, Music, VTubers, and Coworking/Coding join DJs and IRL streamers. Affiliates and Partners can apply to join.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube Partners who submitted a W8 US tax form in AdSense in 2021 will have to resubmit the form before the end of the year. YouTube recommends submitting the information by December 10. Note that the W9 form, which is used by US persons, does not need to be resubmitted.

YouTube is testing fixable Community Guidelines violations. The idea is that for some violations creators can edit their content and then submit it for review. Of course, if YouTube got it wrong in the first place, the best course is to submit an appeal.

Buffer has new TikTok and YouTube scheduling options. Uploading videos via Buffer doesn’t let you add music, stickers or other platform-specific options. So they now offer a “Notify Me” option, where they send you a reminder to post the video manually. Learn more. This makes sense if you use Buffer as your main social media scheduling tool.

I’m not sure what Substack is, exactly, but it’s definitely not just a newsletter platform. It has an algorithmic Notes feed, chat, podcasts, videos, and starting this week, live streaming to subscribers from the Substack Android or iOS mobile app. Features include the option to limit the live stream to paid subscribers and collaborate with others. The live stream is archived and can be posted for on-demand viewing. Live streaming is initially available to “bestsellers”, but will eventually be available to everyone. You can request early access here.

Web Publishers and Search

Google shared “3 quick tips” to make your website faster. “Core web vitals aren’t as important as some people might think they are.” Watch the video.

If you have a Google Calendar embedded on your website, you probably have noticed that it looks pretty dated. It’s getting a makeover! Embedded calendars will have a responsive layout, so they resize based on the screen size; text is easier to read; and now it works with a screen reader and keyboard shortcuts. This update is rolling out over the next month.

You can now publish from the Substack Android app. This was already available for iOS devices.

Patreon launched new discovery and monetization options. Creators have a new Recommendations tab, that showcases personal recommendations of other creators to follow. The Search tab is now the Explore tab, and helps people find creators who match their interests. And you can now let people make a one-time purchase to access a particular post or collection, offer discounts in your shop, and let Patreon’s Autopilot to encourage free followers to become paid members.

You can now add up to 20 images in a Threads post. Instagram also recently updated the maximum to 20 images and videos in a post. They would have to be very compelling for people to look at all of them.

On Instagram you can use the “Reveal” sticker in a Story. This prompts the viewer to DM you to be able to see the image.

LinkedIn now lets you opt out of having your data used for generative AI training. European users will not have their data used for AI training “until further notice”, and so will not have this setting.

If you use Snapchat, check out their latest updates: Snap Unveils a Range of Updates at Annual Partner Summit. Yes, of course, there are AI features.

Communication and Collaboration

If you have a Pixel 9 Pro Fold you can use dual camera mode to use the back and front cameras at the same time in a Google Meet meeting. Learn more.

Discord now offers end-to-end encryption for audio and video calls (it’s called DAVE).

Google Slides now supports multiple monitors in presentation mode. You can use this to view the speaker notes and timer on one monitor while the slides are full screen on a second monitor or projector.

Why wasn’t this a feature before? You can now add birthdays directly to Google Calendar. Currently Calendar pulls birthdays from your Google Contacts. This update will first be available on Android devices, and later on the web and iOS devices.

Google Sheets now lets you insert a blank table from the table manager sidebar. You can also reference data in tables with IMPORTRANGE.

More AI Updates and News

Google shared an update on how it is integrating the C2PA Content Credentials into Google Image Search (“About this image” details) and Google Ads. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentiticy (C2PA) steering committee includes Adobe, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and other big companies. It’s interesting that Google uses SynthID (which they developed), rather than Content Credentials (the C2PA specifications used by Adobe), to watermark images and video created with Google’s generative tools.

Jaron Schneider at PetaPixel says If You Care About Photography, Apple's Approach Should Have You Cheering. Apple stated “The way we like to think of it is that [a photograph] a personal celebration of something that really, actually happened”, which contrasts to Google’s AI photo editing tools that let you create a photo that is “authentic to your memory and to the greater context, but maybe isn’t authentic to a particular millisecond.”

404 Media reports: Project Analyzing Human Language Usage Shuts Down Because ‘Generative AI Has Polluted the Data’