YouTube Stories are shutting down June 26 as company focuses on Shorts

Stories are over — at least on YouTube, that is. The Google-owned video site announced today that YouTube Stories will be shutting down on June 26, 2023, as the company aims to focus on other key areas, like Shorts, Community posts and live videos, in addition to its traditional long-form content. Creators will be alerted to the shutdown through various channels, like forum posts, in-app messages, reminders in YouTube Studio and more, YouTube says.

Once copied by nearly every social app, Stories have lost traction in the wake of TikTok’s rise. These days, services are adopting the short-form vertical video format popularized by TikTok instead of the more ephemeral and casual Stories format.

YouTube isn’t alone in abandoning Stories, either. Netflix in years past had tested a Stories-like feature called “Extras” in its mobile app where it shared videos and photos from popular shows. The streamer later moved on to embrace vertical video with the launch of features like its short-form comedy videos feed “Fast Laughs” and a related vertical video feature aimed at kids. LinkedIn also abandoned its Stories feature in 2021. And while Spotify recently introduced a feature similar to Stories for artists’ profiles, the app’s larger redesign is one that prioritizes TikTok-like discovery feeds as its central focus.

First launched in 2018, YouTube officially rolled out Stories to creators with over 10,000 subscribers — but it never broadened access to everyone on YouTube to allow casual, personal sharing to really take off. The company had suggested at the time creators could use 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.

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