YouTube To Shut Down Stories As Content Creators Move Towards “Shorts” And Community Posts

YouTube is sunsetting "Stories", a feature that allowed content creators to publish temporary posts. The crowd-sourced video platform will now focus on "Shorts", regular long-form videos, and other types of content.

YouTube Stories, a lesser-known feature that never really took off in a similar category on other social media platforms, is going away. YouTube announced today that Stories will be retired on June 26, 2023.

Why Did YouTube Stories Fail?

YouTube Stories was first released as a feature on the Google-owned platform back in 2018. YouTube restricted the availability of Stories to creators with more than 10,000 subscribers.

YouTube had indicated creators could use Stories to engage with their audience in between their more polished and produced videos. The platform even suggested some content ideas for creators such as behind-the-scenes updates, vlogs, sneak peeks at upcoming videos, quick updates, and more.

YouTube Stories could only have temporary posts. Specifically speaking, content posted on this sub-platform disappeared after seven days. YouTube didn't even allow creators to retain or showcase Stories on a creator's profile. This meant the content would be erased permanently.

There are two possible reasons why YouTube Stories may have failed to meet YouTube's expectations. The crowd-sourced video-sharing platform never allowed the Stories feature to trickle down.

Access to the YouTube Stories feature was never broadened to casual users or for personal use. Content creators with a small number of subscribers could have benefitted from the feature.

Did Shorts Kill Stories?

Content creators never embraced YouTube Stories, presumably because the content would never live on in perpetuity on the platform. Additionally, YouTube has better engagement tools like Community posts.

Community Posts let creators share quick updates, promote their content or have conversations with fans. Additionally, YouTube recently expanded access to Community posts to a broader set of creators. The platform stopped restricting the feature to creators with more than 500 subscribers.

Needless to add, content creators have largely and actively shifted to YouTube Shorts. In fact, YouTube has acknowledged that the TikTok-style format has also been more successful than Stories. Creators who used both, on average, saw "many times more subscribers" on Shorts than on Stories, mentioned a spokesperson for the company:

"As Shorts adoption grew on YouTube, we saw that creators benefited from this new format. Stories are going away so we can prioritize key areas that creators need to be successful. We'll continue to invest in helping creators grow and connect with their audiences across formats."

Creators who use Stories will receive alerts about the feature's shutdown via a notification in YouTube Studio, in Help Center content. Additionally, YouTube will remind creators about the changes in an upcoming Creator Insider video, where it regularly publishes updates. There will also be a notification directly in the Stories section.