by tyler | Mar 5, 2024 | Tech
Several social media websites are experiencing outages on Tuesday morning. YouTube confirmed that some users are having trouble loading videos on the platform; meanwhile, platforms like Discord and Meta’s Threads, Facebook and Instagram are down as well.
According to a post on Google’s support page , users may be experiencing an empty home page, error messages, spinning wheels while scrolling on Shorts, and running out of videos to watch on Shorts’ infinite feed.
“Rest assured we’re working on a fix now!” the post says.
YouTube also shared an update on its X account, which links to the support page.
thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we’re on it! 🔍
will follow up here once things are back to normal, you can also follow our Help Community post for details ➡️ https://t.co/4Ezmtku3Em
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 5, 2024
The root cause of these widespread outages remains unclear. Sometimes, several platforms go down at the same time if they’re using the same cloud computing services, like AWS. But AWS is not reporting any issues ; plus, companies like Meta and Google are large enough to operate data centers independently of providers like AWS, making outages of this nature uncommon.
This story is developing…
Discord is down for some users
Facebook, Instagram and Threads are all down in massive Meta outage on Super Tuesday
by tyler | Mar 5, 2024 | Tech
Several social media websites are experiencing outages on Tuesday morning. YouTube confirmed that some users are having trouble loading videos on the platform; meanwhile, platforms like Discord and Meta’s Threads, Facebook and Instagram are down as well.
According to a post on Google’s support page , users may be experiencing an empty home page, error messages, spinning wheels while scrolling on Shorts, and running out of videos to watch on Shorts’ infinite feed.
“Rest assured we’re working on a fix now!” the post says.
YouTube also shared an update on its X account, which links to the support page.
thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we’re on it! 🔍
will follow up here once things are back to normal, you can also follow our Help Community post for details ➡️ https://t.co/4Ezmtku3Em
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 5, 2024
The root cause of these widespread outages remains unclear. Sometimes, several platforms go down at the same time if they’re using the same cloud computing services, like AWS. But AWS is not reporting any issues ; plus, companies like Meta and Google are large enough to operate data centers independently of providers like AWS, making outages of this nature uncommon.
This story is developing…
Discord is down for some users
Facebook, Instagram and Threads are all down in massive Meta outage on Super Tuesday
by tyler | Feb 28, 2024 | Tech
YouTube Create, Google’s standalone mobile app aimed at creators, which helps them produce both Shorts and longer videos, is expanding to a broader set of markets after last fall’s launch into beta testing. The app was initially available on Android in the U.S. and a handful of other select markets, but today will become available to over a dozen more countries, including Brazil, Spain, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and others.
With this move, Create will now be offered in a total of 21 countries.
The idea behind Create is to offer video creators an easy-to-use suite of free tools for making videos on the go. Announced at YouTube’s Create event last September , the tool aims to address specific challenges creators face, including editing videos and the use of creative tools, like stickers, GIFs, and effects. The app additionally takes aim at TikTok, whose built-in creative tools and AR and AI filters have made it a popular choice for non-technical creators who want to experiment with video but may not have editing know-how.
Image Credits: YouTube
Image Credits: YouTube
With Create, users can upload clips, split and trim videos, use effects, and access royalty-free music to complement their videos. These songs, which are copyright-safe, will also sync the beats of the song to the video clips, similar to TikTok.
Another popular tool, Audio Cleanup, leverages a denoising model to reduce background and ambient noise and enhance the audio quality of users’ clips recorded on their smartphones.
Also available is a built-in voiceover tool that includes automatic and editable captions, with various options to stylize the text.
When users have finalized their edits, they can publish directly to YouTube with just a tap.
Image Credits: YouTube
Image Credits: YouTube
By offering a suite of tools just for YouTube creators, the company hopes to capture more of the market that prefers to use standalone tools for editing videos. For instance, even though TikTok has a large library of built-in effects, many creators turn to ByteDance’s other creative app, CapCut, to prep their TikTok videos. Create offers a similar flow for those who prefer to publish on YouTube instead.
Starting today, the Create app is available in new markets including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, and Turky. It initially launched in the U.S., Germany, France, U.K., India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Singapore.
by tyler | Feb 1, 2024 | Tech
Google said today that YouTube now has more than 100 million paid users across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. This number is up from the 80 million paid users the company mentioned in November 2022.
Earlier this week, during its Q4 2023 earnings call, Sundar Pichai said that Google’s subscription business — which includes YouTube’s paid plans — has now crossed $15 billion annually .
The company’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler said that premium users are providing more value to its partners.
“YouTube Music and Premium performed well. Premium users are delivering more value to our partners and YouTube than even ad-supported users do. On average, each additional Premium sign-up boosts earnings for creators, music and media partners, and YouTube itself,” he said.
The search giant first launched YouTube Music in 2015 . At that time, YouTube offered a $9.99 per month Red subscription for ad-free viewing that also allowed users to access Play Music . In 2018, the Red subscription was rebranded to YouTube Premium .
In the past year, YouTube has cracked down on ad blockers by saying that these tools violate its terms of service. The video streaming service started to show a warning about preventing them from watching videos unless they disable ad blockers.
In the last few years, it also experimented with asking users to pay to watch videos in higher resolution or showed multiple unskippable ads .
Separately, the company has launched features like mini-games and video with enhanced bitrate to make the Premium version more attractive for users.
YouTube has expanded its Premium subscription in over 100 countries. In December 2023, the company expanded the offering to 10 more countries , including Algeria, Cambodia, Ghana, Iraq, Joran, Kenya and Senegal.
YouTube is a big part of Google’s business and it garnered $9.2 billion in Q4 2023 — up from $8 billion for the same period last year.
by tyler | Jan 25, 2024 | Tech
No wonder YouTube launched Shorts. A new study of children’s online habits found that children ages 4 through 18 spent a global average of 112 minutes daily on TikTok’s short video app in 2023, an increase from 107 minutes the year prior. And although YouTube remains the world’s biggest streaming app among this demographic, kids spent 60% more time on TikTok last year. The data, from a new study on kids’ digital media, also examined kids’ use of novel technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The study, which takes into account the digital media habits of over 400,000 families and schools worldwide, hails from parent control software maker Qustodio . In its annual report, the company paints a picture of the digital habits of kids and their technology usage across mobile and desktop devices, with deep dives into select markets, including the U.S., U.K., Spain, Australia, and France. What’s unique about its dataset is that it comes from kids’ real-world usage of technology, rather than panelist questions. However, the data may not be fully representative of kids’ digital media habits, since its slice of the market represents those households and schools using its parental control software.
Still, it’s a large body of data to pull from and reveals some overall trends that speak to how kids, both younger and older, are engaging with technology.
Notably, the firm for the first time this year looked into kids’ use of new technologies, including AI.
Because ChatGPT didn’t launch on iOS until May and on Android in July, Qustodio chose to look solely at the usage of OpenAI’s website. Globally, it found that almost 20% of kids accessed the site last year, making it the 18th most-visited site for the year. In the U.S., 18.7% of kids visited the site, and it was in 32nd place overall. Australia saw the largest adoption, as 24% of kids visited the site in 2023.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
On the streaming front, children spent 27% more time watching streaming services than they did last year, though the price hikes at some services may have impacted their viewership numbers. The firm found that kids spent 4% less time watching Netflix in 2023, 23% less time on Disney+, and 12% less time on Hulu. Meanwhile, YouTube and its sister app YouTube Kids beat records, with watch time for the latter growing by 14% globally, reaching 96 minutes per day, on average — the highest figure Qustodio has seen since the start of its data collection in 2019. YouTube was at 70 minutes, up from 67 last year.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
Though Netflix raised prices and cracked down on passwords in 2023, it still remained the second most popular streamer worldwide among kids, as 40% used the service. YouTube was in first place, with 63% of kids using it, and Disney+ was in third place, at 20%. However, Netflix was the only paid service to grow in popularity year-over-year, as other streamers saw their percentages drop, including Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu, as well as livestreaming service Twitch, which dropped from 11% of kids using the service in 2022 to just 8% in 2023. Those who remained on Twitch this year boosted their viewing hours, watching 16% more livestreams globally at 22 minutes per day, on average.
Despite growing concerns among parents and legislators about social media’s harms, the use of social media apps among kids was as popular as ever in 2023, for better or for worse.
TikTok remained the most popular app globally, used by 44% of kids, and Facebook, proving its staying power, was the second most popular, used by 38%.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
Elon Musk’s X seemed to live up to the mantra that “no press is bad press,” Qustodio says, as Twitter’s rebranding saw 38% of the younger demographic using the platform last year, up from 30% in 2022. (But it seems parents took note of the changes at X, too, making it the third most blocked service globally, behind TikTok and Instagram.)
Rounding out the list of most popular social apps globally were Reddit, Instagram, and Pinterest, at 32%, 32%, and 31% usage, respectively.
The list looks a little different in the U.S., though, as TikTok is followed by X, Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest, and then Instagram.
Still, TikTok gobbled up far more time than its rivals, with usage of 112 minutes per day, on average globally, compared with 63 minutes for Instagram, 19 for Facebook, 16 for Pinterest, 10 for X, and 9 minutes for Reddit.
Related, Meta’s WhatsApp maintained a top spot as the most popular messaging app globally, used by 37% of kids, ahead of Snapchat (35%), Discord (31%), Messages (28%), Skype (21%) and Google Duo (13%). However, Snapchat was by far the app kids spent the most time on, with an average of 74 minutes per day, well ahead of its next nearest rival, Discord, at 27 minutes per day. If it had been categorized among the social apps instead of the communication apps, that would have made it the No. 3 app by time spent.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
Among gaming apps, Roblox was the most popular, used by 48% of kids for an average of 130 minutes per day globally, followed by Minecraft, Among Us, Clash Royale, Stumble Guys, and Magic Tiles 3.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
Kids also continued to use popular learning apps last year, like those provided by their schools, such as Google Classroom, as well as those in the educational space, like top apps Duolingo, Photomath, Kahoot!, Quizlet, Simply Piano, and Brainly.
Image Credits: Qustodio
Image Credits: Qustodio
In addition to delving into market trends, the full report also deals with how parents should approach managing and monitoring their kids’ technology usage, and what to expect in the future. For the latter, Qustodio cautioned parents that AI tools are expected to grow by almost 40% per year between 2023 and 2030, though among younger kids (ages 10 to 13), only 6% said they were active users.
