Peggy K's Creator Weekly: YouTube Erase Song, Twitch Updates, Threads Birthday

Author

Peggy K
July 06, 2024

I hope you’re staying cool this week! It was fortunate there was a holiday so I didn’t need to do anything much.

This week there are a few updates from YouTube, news from TwitchCon Europe, Threads celebrated its first birthday, and more.

Top news and updates this week

  • YouTube updates the Erase Song tool to remove copyright-claimed music

  • Twitch announced new features in the works for the mobile app, Stories, Clips, Stream Together, Power Ups and more

  • YouTube live streamers can now go through policy training for unauthorized 3rd party content warnings

  • Google Search Console had delayed Performance Reports data this week (but it should be fixed)

  • Threads is one year old, and has plans for the future

  • Mastodon has a feature that links a shared news article to the author’s Fediverse account

  • After backlash Meta (including Instagram) is changing labels from “Made with AI” to “AI Info” 

  • Instagram says focus on shares of your Reels

  • Learn how to use Google Gemini to increase productivity and get a free prompting guide

Read on for details and additional updates!

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To Do & Try

YouTube Updates Erase Song Tool

YouTube shared a demo of their updated tool to remove claimed copyrighted music from a video without affecting other audio. This uses an “AI-powered algorithm” to more accurately remove music than the previous version. 

If there is a copyright claim on music in your video, you can choose either to only remove the copyright-claimed song, or mute all audio in the claimed segments. Other options include trimming out the claimed segment or replacing the song. 

Any of these can clear the copyright claim. 

Note that if the video has more than 100,000 views, you may not be able to save changes after editing, unless your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program. 

Twitch Announces Community-Building Features

This week at TwitchCon Europe in Rotterdam, Twitch announced a number of new features, emphasizing that the focus is on their main mission: 

Create belonging by enabling streamers to build community.

Redesigned mobile app: Twitch viewers spend more time watching on desktop, but most new viewers start watching on mobile. The new design is meant to connect viewers with content, with a stream of live previews, a clips feed and Stories at the top. They are also working on features like picture-in-picture for Android. 

Stories updates: Twitch launched stories well after YouTube, Twitter and other platforms tried stories and then removed them. It’s not clear if they are working better on Twitch than other platforms, or if Twitch is giving them time to grow. New features include video creation and upload and bringing stories to the web (which seems important when most viewing time is on desktop).

Vertical Clips: During the Clip creation process, a vertical Clip will be created along with the landscape clip. That will show in the mobile app, and can be downloaded. Later this year it will be possible to export Clips directly to other social sites. 

Stream Together Drop-Ins: Streamers can “knock on the door” of other live streamers who are open to Stream Together drop-ins, and start the collaborative stream immediately. 

Interactive and customizable Power Ups: Power Ups are special effects that viewers pay for with Bits (which are purchased with real money). So it’s a fun way to tip your favorite live streamer. The plan is for more Power Up options that are interactive and customizable. 

Enhanced Broadcasting will be available to all streamers using OBS Studio or XSplit Broadcaster. This “gives streamers more control over their video quality via client-side encoding and automatic configuration.”

Creator Clubs help creators find communities that stream similar content. A Club will have their own Discord server, events and workshops. Applications for the first two Clubs - DJs and IRL - will be available at the end of July. 

Bleed Purple Statues: YouTube rewards creator subscription milestones with a Play Button. Twitch now rewards creators with heart-shaped Bleed Purple Statues for 5 million hours watched (Purple), 50 million hours watched (Marble) or 250 million hours watched (Chrome). Here’s a photo of what they look like.

Twitch also updated their tips for applying to the Partner Program, noting that creators must maintain partner-level performance for two consecutive months prior to their application.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

If your YouTube live stream received a Community Guidelines warning for unauthorized 3rd party content (like streaming a TV show), you can now go through policy training to have the warning expire. Click on the Strikes box on your YouTube Studio dashboard to see your options. Learn more from Creator Insider.

If you have Shopping set up for your YouTube channel, you will see a new card in YouTube Studio with a summary and top products, plus a link to the Shopping Hub. More information from Creator Insider.

Zach Bussey notes that when you live stream from the YouTube mobile app, you can now choose the orientation (vertical or horizontal), rather than just relying on your phone to rotate correctly.

If you use the video editor built into the TikTok app, you can download a copy of your video without the TikTok watermark, as long as you post it to TikTok first.

At VidCon the word from Instagram was that to grow your account you need to regularly post 30-90 second Reels.

I love this live-streaming-in-a-box setup the BBC used to live stream the election count. It’s a tripod and a phone with the streaming app set up - easy peasy!

Substack ran a master class for video creators who want to get started on the platform. Watch the video on Substack (of course).

StreamYard will be announcing its first new features under their new ownership in a live stream on Monday, July 15. They have already teased that one of the features will be dark mode.

This week Google Search Console had a several day delay in updating Performance Reports data. On July 3 Google said that it could take several days to reprocess the data. So if you are seeing a big drop in the data from early last week, it may mean you just need to wait for it to be refreshed.

Bing Webmaster Guidelines now prohibits adding content to “perform prompt injection attacks”. 

Tumblr launched Blaze Pro, their native self-serve advertising platform. At the end of 2023, Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic (Tumblr’s parent company) shared plans to “streamline” work on the platform, and focus on “core functionality” because Tumblr wasn’t bringing in enough revenue to cover costs. .

Tumblr has also been making a number of updates to Communities, including making sure that Community mods can see all posts, and all Community members can see mod posts, even if they have blocked each other. Tumblr Communities were launched in Open Beta at the beginning of June.

Social Media

Threads just turned one year old. If you use the platform, there are some fun Easter eggs, including a party hat for your profile and special app icons. Casey Newton at Platformer interviewed Instagram and Threads head Adam Mosseri to find out what’s coming: Threads has 175 million monthly active users, the focus is on conversations and sharing ideas, they are working on separating Threads from Instagram and more real-time updates. If you are on Threads, here’s the key to growth: “If you're really trying to grow your presence, you should reply much more than you post.”

What about those Threads user numbers? Threads got a kick start from Instagram, with 100 million users shortly after launch. Since then it has been slowly and steadily growing.  Social Media Today points out that X has 250 million daily active users, a number that hasn’t changed significantly since November 2022. And Reddit has 81 million daily active users. Side note: Meta says that India is one of the most active countries on the platform.

Mastodon has a new feature that links a shared news article to the author’s Fediverse account. Journalists may author articles for multiple publications, and this allows any of those shared articles to point back to the author’s profile. This can be implemented with a meta tag on the article page, and it can point to a handle on any Fediverse account, including Mastodon, Flipboard, Threads, WordPress with the ActivityPub plugin and others. Note that this currently will only appear on Mastodon for links to moderator-approved websites (including The Verge, MacStories and MacRumors). It would be amazing if this was adopted as a standard (with protections to prevent false associations). 

After much controversy, Meta is changing the label on images and videos created with generative AI tools from “Made with AI” to “AI Info”.  The label can be clicked for more information. While this seems like an improvement, it doesn’t resolve the main issues that Adobe and other editing software ads metadata that AI tools were used, but not exactly how (did it change a few pixels or remove a person?), and it’s apparently easy to bypass the label by copy-pasting or screenshotting the image.

Instagram says to focus on shares (of your Reels, of course) to expand the reach of your content. Social Media Today highlights a study that says that positive, interesting, inspiring and humorous content is the most shareable. 

AI Updates and News

In OnEBoard’s Tech Topic on June 30, special guest Jivko Gurmanov shared a number of tips for using Google Gemini as a productivity tool. He also shared a free Prompting Guide 101. Watch the episode and get the free guide!

After much controversy, Meta is changing the label on images and videos created with generative AI tools from “Made with AI” to “AI Info”.  The label can be clicked for more information. While this seems like an improvement, it doesn’t resolve the main issues that Adobe and other editing software ads metadata that AI tools were used, but not exactly how (did it change a few pixels or remove a person?), and it’s apparently easy to bypass the label by copy-pasting or screenshotting the image.

Thanks for reading! 🌼