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Creators: Get the latest tips, tutorials and updates!

Are you a video creator, blogger, content collector or curator? Subscribe to get news and tutorials for YouTube, Blogger, AdSense, and other creator tools, platforms, social media, and more!  Learn more about me . Last updated January 2025       Subscribe to the RSS feed      Subscribe to Weekly Creator Updates only Subscribe to my Weekly Creator Newsletter by email Creator Weekly Live!  Join me live on Sundays at 10:30 AM Pacific to discuss the week's creator updates.  Watch or set a notification. Watch previous episodes: Tips, Tutorials & Updates       Blogger Tutorials & Updates        YouTube  and  Live Streaming  Tutorials & Updates        Chat and Meet  Tutorials & Update...
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Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Views, Live Take a Break, Twitch Ad-Friendly Content

It’s the last week of March and there are tons of updates this week. There are updates for YouTubers, Twitch streamers, website owners, newsletter writers, plus Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, X and more. 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email. Top news and updates this week YouTube metrics change: A Shorts View will count when a Short starts playing, rather than when someone watches the Short. This is comparable with other short-form video platform metrics. YouTube is testing reduced push notifications to prevent people from turning off notifications altogether. Twitch published Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines to help monetizing creators understand how their content may affect revenue. YouTube has added a “take a break” option for live streams, showing a pre-recorded video or ads. You can now see your subscribers in the YouTube mobile app. You can access the YouTube AI Inspiration tab from content and comments in YouTube Studio, and bookmark your favorite suggest...

10 years ago this week mobile live streaming launched to the masses

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending March 21, 2015 . Ten years ago this week, everyone was talking about the new mobile live streaming apps Periscope and Meerkat. Meerkat launched in February 2015. Periscope was founded in 2014, and was acquired by Twitter before its public launch in March of that year. The apps made it incredibly easy to go live. You didn't need to have a fancy camera or understand live streaming settings. All you needed to do was launch the app and tap a couple of buttons. People started really buzzing about the apps during the SXSW festival , which was 10 years ago this week.  Why? Twitter tried to kill Meerkat.  OK, maybe kill is too strong a word. But part of what got people talking was that Twitter cut Meerkat off from their social graph. When Meerkat laun...

Creator Weekly: YouTube video copyright details, Bluesky traffic, Ghost ActivityPub integration

Spring has sprung, flowers are in bloom , and tech companies shared lots of updates. I suspect it’s the “launch by the end of Q1” rush. This week there are updates for video on YouTube and LinkedIn, for live streamers from Twitch, Kick, and Restream, for publishers using Ghost and AdSense, and for social users on Bluesky and Threads. Plus a bunch of Gemini and other AI updates. Pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea and dig in! 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email. Top news and updates this week YouTube improved the video copyright claims details page in YouTube Studio. YouTube has improved the member content feed on mobile. YouTube is experimenting with text and sticker placement guides in the Shorts editor. YouTube is testing an option to let viewers hide video end screens. YouTube is asking some creators to help build AI protection tools. YouTube also answered more questions about the upcoming mid-roll update, recapped top updates in the past year, and shared details abo...

10 Years Ago This Week: YouTube Launches Immersive 360 video

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending March 14, 2015 . Ten years ago this week YouTube launched 360-degree video.   YouTube even worked with camera companies to make sure their 360-degree cameras were compatible with the platform.  If you were wearing a virtual reality headset you would be totally immersed, and be able to look all around you as the video played.    At launch, the videos would only play correctly in the Android app or in Chrome on the web. But it was a step towards " virtual reality becoming a reality ". Today 360-degree video is available in the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS, or in the Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Opera browser. If you view the videos in a browser, you can use your cursor to drag them around.    The orig...

Creator Weekly: Meta Community Notes, Facebook Stories Monetization, YouTube Monetizatoin

Spring is in the air! I’ve been thinking about this year’s garden, contemplating a spring cleaning project (although I usually don’t get far beyond the thinking part) and hoping for a week of sunshine so my favorite hike is less muddy. This week I live streamed about my 15 years (!) as a Google Product Expert and I shared some cool swag I received from YouTube. Thanks for stopping by and saying hello! This week’s big update is Meta testing Community Notes (which I’m skeptical of), with additional updates from YouTube, Facebook, Bluesky, Reddit and more. Plus more Gemini features and tools across Google. 📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email. Top news and updates this week Meta is testing Community Notes in the US for Facebook , Instagram and Threads , to replace 3rd party fact checkers. YouTube Creator Collective events are happening in all US states. Sign up today! YouTube shared additional information about the mid-roll ad changes that will go into effect in May. Y...

10 Years Ago This Week: Google tried to ban porn on Blogger

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate 10 years later. This update was for the  week ending March 2, 2015 . Ten years ago, Google ban porn on Blogger, then quickly reversed themselves after user pushback. On February 23, 2015 Google announced that Blogger blogs would no longer be able to "publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity" This was a big change, because Blogger had allowed sexual content and nudity since it launched in 1999. And was one of the few platforms that did. In 2013 Blogger had  banned ads for adult websites , and monetizing adult content, but not the adult content itself. The change would go into effect on March 23, and at that point any existing blogs with explicit content would be made private. That meant that no content would be deleted, but only the blog owners, admins, and specific people the blog was shared with would be a...