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‘Stories will be extinct’, well at least for YouTube. Don’t know about the other social media platforms but YouTube is withdrawing the feature ‘YouTube Stories’ with effect from June 26, 2023. With an aim to focus more on other key areas like Shorts, Community posts, Long /short-form content, and live videos the decision has been made to Call-off Youtube Tales featuring stories.
Alerts will be sent through various channels like in-app message pop-ups, forum posts, and reminders in the user account to notify the creators and a period of one month in advance was a good call before taking the feature back.
When were YouTube Stories launched?
Once replicated by nearly every social media app, the Stories feature was officially launched by YouTube in 2018. The feature was made available to creators with over 10,000 subscribers but never broadened to everyone on YouTube to allow casual and personal sharing of stories.
YouTube targeted the feature for creators to engage with their audience for events like behind-the-scenes updates, vlogs, quick updates, and so on. The feature was suggested to be used as a sneak peek at upcoming videos and give a broader perspective to the audience.
YouTube wasn’t alone, various other social media apps tried to jump onto the Stories trend and when it didn’t work out they moved on. Netflix tested a Stories-like feature called ‘Extras’ but later moved on to embrace vertical video features instead. LinkedIn also abandoned its stories feature in 2021, Spotify recently introduced ‘Stories for artists’ profiles’ but doesn’t expect much out of it.
Why YouTube is moving-on from stories?
Stories, on any platform, have lost traction in the wake of TikTok’s rise. These days, platforms are adopting the short-form vertical video format popularized by TikTok instead of the more transient and casual Stories format.
YouTube Stories are going away.
The crowd-sourced video platform, Youtube says, “Today, there are many ways to create on YouTube – from Community posts to Shorts and to long-form and Live. To prioritize these key features, Stories are going away. Starting on 6/26/2023 the option to create a new YouTube Story will no longer be available. Stories that are already live on that date will expire 7 days after they were originally shared.”
Considering the relatively low usage and take-off of the Stories option, the announcement is not expected to make a huge impact on creators. The creators will be notified, although it could change their YouTube content planning in the future but they have better things to look forward to.
YouTube suggests creators should focus more on Shorts and Community posts instead, as they are YouTube’s fastest-growing content format, and to consider using Community posts made available past week to all channels.
YouTube clarifies that the move is to drive engagement and interaction with essentially better options than the stories display. Options that were losing significance needed to be withdrawn.
A way forward for ‘Creators’
Admitting that the Stories weren’t working as expected, YouTube announced that among creators leveraging both Stories and Community posts, the latter drove more comments and likes compared to YouTube stories.
YouTube dropped the over 500 subscriber requirements for access to community posts, which has driven engagement drastically. Therefore, it would be fair to say the Story feature saw limited adoption by the creators over a period of one year.
A shift from short-form video over to YouTube Shorts was seen in creators, data suggested necessary steps, and YouTube has taken them to ensure more success for the creators and the platform alongside.
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