YouTube to Discontinue Stories, but Expands Access to Community Posts

Source: YouTube

YouTube will be discontinuing Stories on June 26th, citing Community Posts and Shorts as viable alternatives. Community Posts, a text-based feature, has many of the same capabilities as Stories and more. According to YouTube, Community Posts also receive more comments and likes on average than Stories. In advance of the announcement, YouTube expanded access to Community Posts to all creators and added new features like Image Polls, Quizzes, stickers, and filters.

Community Posts can help creators reach a wider audience, engage with their followers more deeply, and interact with them outside of video uploads. They can use the feature to share behind-the-scenes content, solicit feedback from their subscribers, promote upcoming and existing videos, and more.

YouTube has joined LinkedIn and Twitter, which have removed their Stories features, demonstrating that the once must-have content format isn't a fit for every platform. On a greater level, YouTube's move highlights the push and pull of platforms launching new features and removing existing ones. There have also been examples of them consolidating features, such as Pinterest, which recently unified its Pins and Idea Pins into a single format, creating a more streamlined user experience for creators.