Credit: Leon Bublitz
YouTube is swinging the ax on Stories, wiping out the temporary posts it “borrowed” from Snapchat. Instead, it will focus on shorts, the format it “borrowed” from TikTok.
“Nowadays there are many ways to create on YouTube – from community posts to shorts to long form and live. To prioritize these features, Stories are being phased out Notice reads about YouTube Creators.
YouTube plans to swing the ax and take away the ability to create new YouTube stories on June 26th. Stories that were already online by this date will now expire seven days after their original publication. The company offers community posts and YouTube shorts as an alternative to this short-lived feature, which was taken straight from the Snapchat playbook.
YouTube first introduced Stories in 2017 under the name Reels, which was only available to users with 10,000 subscribers. Stories disappeared after a certain amount of time, giving the exclusivity of “following” a specific channel. Many channels used the feature to provide small updates, behind-the-scenes content, glitches and more that didn’t fit in the main channel with polished content.
It seems that the lightning in a bottle that Snapchat captured nearly a decade ago is fading as platforms work to crush concepts. Twitter abandoned its fleet concept within a year of its launch – underscoring an important fact: Disappearing content really doesn’t fit the online world. Sure, it’s great for face-to-face communication and sending photos between people, but monetizing the feature on a platform that serves other purposes seems to have been more difficult than Twitter or YouTube thought.
YouTube has expanded the Community Posts feature to give YouTube creators the ability to keep their community informed without relying on external social networks like Twitter. These posts still have a timer and can be set to expire so that the update audiences feature can be used. Videos can also be shared as community posts, making Stories feel a bit redundant.