YouTube to bid farewell to 'Stories' from June 26; Community Post, shorts to get updates

The lesser-known feature of YouTube, ‘Stories," will no longer be available starting June 26, as the video-sharing platform announced on Saturday. ‘Stories’ are temporary posts that automatically disappear after a certain period of time, i.e., 24 hours after being uploaded.

YouTube introduced this feature first in 2017. They were available to a limited number of YouTubers who had over 10,000 subscribers. Notably, the idea of stories came from Instagram, which itself took inspiration from Snapchat.

"Today, there are many ways to create on YouTube—from community posts to shorts to long-form and LIVE. To prioritise these key features, stories are going away. Starting on 6/26/2023 the option to create a new YouTube story will no longer be available. Stories that are already LIVE on that date will expire 7 days after they were originally shared. Stories are going away, we’ve seen that both community posts and YouTube shorts are great alternatives that can deliver valuable audience connections and conversations," YouTube said in a blog post.

Community Post

With a focus on community posts and shorts, streaming giant, YouTube is urging content creators to explore alternative options for sharing content on the network. These features are to replace the soon-to-be-abandoned stories section. Creators can now share text-based updates with an expiration date via community posts.

"We’ve recently expanded access to community posts to millions of creators and have brought some of the popular aspects of stories into community posts, such as rich editing tools, and the ability for posts to expire after 24 hours. Creators can strengthen connections with their audiences through new engagement features, including polls, quizzes, filters, and stickers," YouTube added.