Youtube is now getting rid of Stories, a feature it announced back in 2017 under the name Reels. Starting June 26, users won’t be able to post Stories and any existing posts will expire after seven days. The feature hasn’t exactly caught on, and axing it means the streaming platform can focus on other features like Community Posts and Shorts.
Stories on Youtube follow the same concept as Instagram, Whatsapp, Facebook or Snapchat. They let users make a temporary post which automatically disappeared after a set amount of time. They were meant to be used to post updates or behind-the-scenes content for channels to promote themselves and were only available to channels with over 10,000 subscribers.
With increased competition from short-form video competitors Tik Tok and Instagram, Youtube is working hard to find ways to maintain its leadership in the online streaming space, especially when it comes to Shorts — its own short-form, vertical video content format.
The platform has been incentivising traditional content creators to start making shorter content and even started sharing ad revenue from Shorts under a new monetisation plan since February.
Community Posts, another rather less used feature on Youtube has also seen resurging interest by the company. Access to the feature has been expanded and with the new feature that allows users to have the posts expire after a certain period of time, they seem to be picking up any slack that axing stories might have caused. Additionally, new engagement features like polls, quizzes as well as filters and stickers have also been introduced to keep the feature alive.
Youtube’s announcement for the end of Stories on the platform also points this out, in addition to asking users to use Community Posts and Shorts saying that “both Community posts and YouTube Shorts are great alternatives that can deliver valuable audience connections and conversations”.
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