YouTube removes 'Stories' feature, shifting focus to Community posts and Shorts

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YouTube is shutting down its ‘Stories’ feature.

Slated to officially shutter on 26 June 2023, the company’s official blog announced that it noted the apps features, ‘Community Posts’ and ‘YouTube Shorts’ have been great alternatives that have delivered valuable audience connections and facilitated conversations.

Stories were first introduced in 2017 under the name ‘Reels’ and were initially only available to users with over 10,000 subscribers.

Similar to Instagram and Snapchat, YouTube Stories also disappeared after a set amount of time; wherein creators could use Stories to post updates or behind-the-scenes content to promote their channel.

YouTube launching Stories comes alongside the hire of Todd Sherman, who had previously worked as lead product manager on Snapchat’s trend-setting version of the feature. However, as evident in the discontinuation of the feature, it was not as successful as that of the aforementioned competitor apps. Due to the limited access to Stories, personal sharing could not take off in the way Instagram and Snapchat’s stories did.

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On the flip side, YouTube’s Community posts feature allows creators to share quick updates and promote their content. As stated in the official blog, amongst creators who use both posts and Stories, posts on average drove more comments and likes compared to Stories.

To further the growth of Community posts, YouTube has expanded access to posts to millions of creators and has brought some of the popular aspects of Stories into Community posts such as rich editing tools, as well as the ability for posts to expire after 24 hours.

Creators can strengthen connections with their audiences through new engagement features including polls, quizzes, filters and stickers.

"With new features for both Shorts and Community posts to be announced throughout the year, we are committed to investing in new and innovative tools to help you grow your audiences across YouTube. We look forward to seeing what you create with all of these formats – Community posts, Shorts, live streams, and long-form content!," a spokesperson from the YouTube team announced.

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