YouTube Removes Stories Starting Next Month, Strong Evidence You Can't Compete with Instagram!

JAKARTA - YouTube feels that its Stories feature is powerless compared to Shorts, and plans to discontinue the service starting next month.

"Starting 6/26/2023, the option to create a new YouTube Story will no longer be available. Stories that have been broadcast on that date will expire 7 days after they were first shared," said YouTube Community Manager, Meaghan in his official statement quoted Friday, 26 May.

However, YouTube creators need not be sad, because the company will focus more on Communities and Shorts, competitors to TikTok.

"Today, there are many ways to get creative on YouTube – from Community posts to Shorts to long format and Live. To prioritize this core feature, Stories will be discontinued," Meaghan explained.

YouTube recommends that creators switch to Community posts and Shorts. According to the company, the service is a great alternative that can bring valuable audience connections and conversations.

"YouTube Community Posts are a great choice if you want to share light updates, start a conversation, or promote YouTube content to your audience," says Meaghan.

The company says community posts, on average, attract more comments and likes than Stories.

Recently, YouTube also expanded access to Community posts to millions of creators and has brought some popular aspects of Stories to Community posts such as rich editing tools, and the ability for posts to expire after 24 hours.

Creators can strengthen relationships with their audience through new engagement features including polls, quizzes, filters, and stickers.

While Shorts, YouTube is said to be the way to go if a creator's goal is to create short video content or get new viewers.

Just when comparing Community and Stories posts, the Shorts feature is superior because creators can get more subscribers than when they upload Stories.

So YouTube emphasizes, deleting Stories is not a big deal as creators will be better off using Community Posts and YouTube Shorts.

Still, YouTube's move to shut down the Stories feature proves the company can't compete with social media giant Meta, which is adding a similar feature to Instagram and Facebook.

"Getting started is easy. You can try out our lightweight mobile video tools right in the shorts camera, like adding text and filters, or try remixing your favorite content on YouTube," says Meaghan.

"We're continuing to bring more exciting features to the Shorts experience, most recently launching the ability to reply to comments with Shorts."