It will probably come as no surprise to content creators that the YouTube ‘Stories’ feature was discontinued on June 26, 2023. YouTube developed Stories so content creators could engage with their audience using these temporary posts in between their more polished long-form videos.
The truth is that Stories never really took off since its launch in 2018. YouTube was among the first to admit this. In fact, in a YouTube update earlier this year, they essentially admitted that Stories weren’t working and would be permanently discontinued in June 2023.
Learn why Stories was discontinued on YouTube and what’s next for YouTube content creators. Keep reading to learn more.
Why Did YouTube Stories Fail?
It’s fair to say the Stories feature saw limited use for a variety of reasons. The two biggest failures of YouTube Stories were two-fold.
Firstly, the feature was only offered to content creators with 10,000+ subscribers and was never rolled out to casual users of YouTube.
Secondly, unlike Instagram Story Highlights where users could save their stories, YouTube stories couldn’t be saved. This was a big turn-off for content creators, so most pivoted their focus to Community Posts and Shorts which produced better results.
What’s Next for YouTube’s Content Creators?
The book has closed on Stories — at least on YouTube, as the company sets its sights on other key areas like live videos, Community Posts, and Shorts, in addition to its popular long-form content.
In general, for creators who used both Community Posts and Stories, the former resulted in more engagement and subscriptions compared to Stories. ‘Community posts’ is an engagement tool that allows creators to have conversations with fans, promote their videos, and share quick updates. It also helped that the Community post feature was recently expanded to a wider pool of creators by dropping the 500+ subscriber requirement. This increased its popularity over a broader audience.
YouTube Stories was also outshined by the recent launch of Shorts which is a much-improved version of short-form videos. So, many creators have shifted their efforts from short-form videos over to Shorts and have seen a drastic increase in subscribers compared to Stories.
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