Google-owned social platform YouTube is shutting down YouTube Stories, a feature introduced six years ago as a rival to Instagram Stories. Going forward, the platform is seeking to push creators towards YouTube Shorts and Community Posts instead.
In a blog post, YouTube said: “Today, there are many ways to create on YouTube – from Community Posts to Shorts, to long-form and Live. To prioritise these key features, Stories is going away. Starting on June 26, 2023, the option to create a new YouTube Story will no longer be available. Stories that are already live on that date will expire seven days after they were originally shared.”
Stories launched in 2017 to YouTube users with more than 10,000 subscribers. Like Instagram and Snapchat stories, users with access to Stories were able to post content that disappeared after a period of time. Justifying the move, YouTube said: “While Stories is going away, Community Posts and YouTube Shorts are great alternatives that can deliver valuable audience connections and conversations.”
Explaining the sweet-spot of Community Posts, the platform said they are a good choice “if you want to share lightweight updates, start conversations, or promote your YouTube content to your audience. Amongst creators who use both posts and Stories, posts on average drive many times more comments and likes.”
YouTube has recently expanded access to Community Posts to millions of creators and has brought some of the popular aspects of Stories into Community posts such as rich editing tools, and the ability for posts to expire after 24 hours.
YouTube Shorts, meanwhile, is the solution for creators that want to produce short video content or reach a new audience. As with posts, YouTube says Shorts on average drives many times more subscribers for creators than Stories. “With new features for both Shorts and Community posts to be announced, we are committed to investing in tools to help creators grow their audiences across YouTube”.
