YouTube pulls plug on Stories

Introduced in 2018 as Reels, Stories distinguished itself from rival platforms by offering a longer lifespan of one week instead of the usual 24 hours.

Existing Stories will automatically expire after a week and YouTube is urging creators to diversify their non-video content by utilising alternatives such as YouTube Shorts and text-based Community posts, which now have the option to expire after a designated period.

The current trend revolves around Shorts, with YouTube emphasising that creators who utilise both Community posts and Stories observe significantly higher levels of engagement on their posts.

“YouTube Community posts are a great choice if you want to share lightweight updates, start conversations, or promote your YouTube content to your audience,” YouTube said. “Amongst creators who use both posts and Stories, posts on average drive many times more comments and likes compared to Stories”.

The company has also recently expanded access to Community posts for millions of creators, integrating popular features from Stories such as robust editing tools and the ability for posts to expire after 24 hours. Additionally, creators can enhance audience interactions through engaging features like polls, quizzes, filters, and stickers.

Detailed instructions for creating a Community post can be found in the Help Center, while Shorts creator tips are available on the YouTube Creators Channel.