YouTube Stories Shutting Down on June 26: Emphasis on Shorts Takes Center Stage

YouTube Stories Shutting Down | Company Focuses on Shorts | Upcoming June 26

The end of stories has come, at least on YouTube. YouTube Stories will be discontinued on June 26, 2023, according to the Google-owned video platform, which wants to concentrate on other important areas such as Shorts, Community postings, and live videos in addition to its conventional long-form content. According to YouTube, creators will be made aware of the closure through a variety of channels, including forum postings, in-app messaging, reminders in YouTube Studio, and more.

Following TikTok’s success, Stories, which were formerly imitated by almost all social media apps, has lost popularity. Nowadays, services are switching from the more fleeting and informal Stories style to the short-form vertical video format made popular by TikTok.

Stories aren’t only being abandoned by YouTube. In the past, Netflix attempted a feature in its mobile app called “Extras” that was similar to Stories and allowed users to post videos and images from popular series. Later, the streamer embraced vertical video with the introduction of features like its “Fast Laughs” feed of short-form comedy videos and a related vertical video feature geared at children. In 2021, LinkedIn also discontinued its Stories function. And while Spotify recently included a feature for artists’ profiles that is similar to Stories, the app’s overall overhaul places a higher priority on discovery feeds that are similar to those seen on TikTok.

When it first debuted in 2018, YouTube formally offered Stories to producers with over 10,000 followers. However, it never extended access to all YouTube users, preventing casual, personal sharing from taking off. The firm had stated at the time that artists might use Stories to interact with their audience in between uploading more professionally made and polished films. This could be done by posting brief updates, vlogs, behind-the-scenes information, sneak peeks at forthcoming videos, and more.

Similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories, YouTube Stories also vanish after a set amount of time; in this case, seven days. But unlike Instagram’s Story Highlights, it wasn’t feasible to save Stories to a creator’s profile.

Given the popularity of other engagement tools like Community postings, which also allow artists to publish brief updates, promote their material, and participate in dialogue with fans, it’s safe to conclude that the function only saw a modest amount of usage. In today’s release, YouTube said that among producers who utilized both Stories and Community posts, the latter produced “many times more comments and likes” compared to Stories, thereby admitting that Stories weren’t working. Recently, a wider range of producers can have access to Community postings thanks to YouTube removing the >500 subscriber threshold.

Additionally, producers are now focusing their short-form video efforts on YouTube Shorts. According to the firm, creators who utilized both saw “many times more subscribers” on Shorts than on Stories, indicating that this format has also been more successful than Stories.

A YouTube representative explained the changes to us, “We saw that creators benefited from this new format as Shorts adoption grew on YouTube.” “Stories are disappearing so that we can give priority to the areas that artists need to succeed. We’ll keep making investments to support creators’ development and connections with audiences across platforms,” they said.

The termination of Stories will be announced in a community forum post, a notification in YouTube Studio, and in Help Centre articles, and YouTube will remind creators about the changes in an upcoming Creator Insider video, where it routinely posts updates. Creators who often use Stories will also get these notifications. Additionally, if authors use the functionality before June 26 there will be a notification right in Stories.

New YouTube Stories won’t be able to be made after that date, but those that are already live will continue to be viewable for seven days after they were first posted, according to YouTube.

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