Come next month, YouTube will be saying goodbye to one of its less popular features – Stories. It’s unclear what the exact impact this will have on content creators. YouTube Channels can be identified through the presence of a red circle around their profile picture, indicating the availability of stories. These stories are comprised of images and videos posted by the creator.
The story creator has the freedom to post whatever they like as their Channel update or some other type of content.
YouTube recently unveiled Shorts, its version of the popular TikTok-like ‘Stories’ format. Despite having distinct differences between them, it is undeniable that both platforms feature a certain degree of similarities with each other.
YouTube announced that it will be removing its Stories feature on June 26 in order to prioritize other features. By doing this, they hope to attract more attention and users to those features. Content that was posted before a certain date will remain visible for seven days after. After that, Story features will no longer be available and the posts from any creator won’t be accessible anymore. This is a permanent decision.
It’s actually quite difficult to recall an instance when YouTube Stories were used, as they have been almost completely overshadowed by the Shorts feature. With the introduction of Shorts having their own button at the bottom of YouTube’s mobile app and dedicated carousels, Stories have become less popular. Nevertheless, they are still an important part of YouTube’s content.
To make it even better, YouTube now provides a monetary incentive for Shorts, which completely removes the hidden agenda of Stories.