YouTube to take down 'Stories' feature in June

YouTube, a Google-owned video-streaming platform, announced Thursday that it will shut down "YouTube Stories" on June 26.

The announcement was made by YouTube through a blog post, which said: “Starting June 26, 2023, the option to create a new YouTube Story will not be available. Stories that are already live on that date will expire seven days after they were originally shared.”

Meanwhile, the company hopes to focus on other essential areas such as shorts, community posts, live videos, etc.

Furthermore, the company said that creators would be notified about the shutdown through various channels, including forum posts, in-app messages, reminders in YouTube Studio, and more.

YouTube, which has 2.1 billion monthly users around the world, explained that both community posts and YouTube shorts are incredible options that can allow "viewer connections and conversations”.

According to the company, YouTube Community posts can be a great option for creators who want to share lightweight updates, start conversations or promote their YouTube content to their audience.

Furthermore, if users want to create short video content or reach new audiences, YouTubeShorts is a better option, with creators who use shorts and stories compared to Stories, the company said.

“As Shorts adoption grew on YouTube, we saw that creators benefited from this new format,” a YouTube spokesperson told TechCrunch about the changes.

“Stories are going away so we can prioritize key areas that creators need to be successful. We’ll continue to invest in helping creators grow and connect with their audiences across formats,” they added.

Shorts have many times more subscribers than average. 

Making their debut in 2018, YouTube officially introduced Stories to creators who had over 10,000 subscribers. 

Moreover, creators used Stories to "engage with their audience in between their more polished and produced videos for things like behind-the-scenes updates, vlogs, sneak peeks at upcoming videos, quick updates, and more." the company said.