Ah, so annoying, YouTube have done it again. They're taking away something from you, something that's benefited creators massively. But the question is, should you care?2 This feature has been around for years, seen by many, used by few, a secret weapon that's only available on the mobile app.

 


 What am I talking about? (Drum rolls) YouTube Stories are going away, as is everybody from this video because nobody cares. Cheerio, drop us a Super Thanks on the way out, cheers. What were YouTube Stories? YouTube Stories were the precursor to YouTube Shorts, really. Very similar to Instagram Stories, vertical format, and mobile only, temporary clips you watched by tapping on a profile image from a channel page or accessing them through their own story shelf from the home feed. And it's quite funny that, as I look at that Stories feed now, absolutely nobody's using it.

 

 [Audience] Ah! But there's tons of Shorts. All of which leads us to the ultimate question, which nobody's asking, when will Stories cease to exist? When will Stories be removed? June the 26th 2023 is the key date the feature will be removed. Any Stories posted up to that date will last the usual seven days before they expire and that will be that. As YouTube Stories were always temporary videos with an expiry date, views were never counted towards your channel's total, and you shouldn't lose any subscribers gained from Stories either. But more on that a little later.

 

 And for the benefit of the three of you who are asking why are YouTube getting rid of Stories? I think the answer's obvious, right? Shorts. For the past three years, YouTube have thrown everything into the functionality, discovery, and accessibility of YouTube Shorts. And, in all of that time, Stories have remained a privileged tool for channels with more than 10,000 subscribers. Rather hilariously, on the support page for Stories, it still says it's in beta, even though, after June the 23rd, 2023, the option to create new Stories will be removed.

 

 And YouTube also raised a very good point About the Community Tab. That was another feature that used to be behind a requirements wall of 1,000 subscribers. But, these days, pretty much anyone can use it. So, I think, in 2023, it does make sense to decommission YouTube Stories. But were they any good? Were YouTube Stories any good?

 

 Well, as we already said, there was a big barrier to entry, 10,000 YouTube subscribers. Hardly anybody could use it. But what annoyed me most about YouTube Stories was the fact that it would only record

 15 to 20 seconds of footage and then it would drop out and I would just never be able to capture enough footage, like it's just happened now.

 


 It's just dropped out on me. It's really annoying is that?

 

 On the other hand, YouTube Stories, it felt like a safety zone where you could experiment with video clips that wouldn't impact the performance of your channel. For example, I love doing Q and as, where I ask you to post your comments and then reply directly, with a story, to that comment. I would happily record up to 50 of these clips because I wasn't worried about views, watch time, average view, and duration.

 

 It didn't contribute to the channel. But would I record 50 YouTube Shorts doing the same thing? I dunno, it sounds a bit risky to me. And then, there were a couple of YouTube Stories Super Users who really took advantage of a feature. 3D animator, Jake Feldman, figured out that if he reposted his Shorts as Stories, he could reach new audiences gaining hundreds of millions of temporary views and hundreds of thousands of permanent subscribers.

 


 I could be completely wrong about this, but here's what I think YouTube were up to. They were slowly developing Stories into a new video community tab but then they abandoned all of that. When TikTok arrived on the scene. It was a threat that was too big to ignore, So YouTube took these Stories concepts and transplanted it into a fully fledged video platform which turned into Shorts. What are your memories of YouTube Stories? Let us know in the comments below. And, if you want 36 hacks to improve your YouTube Shorts, this is the next video you need to watch.

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