Blog Post

YouTube Launches Stories for Creators

by: Power Digital December 5, 2018

Table of Contents

Snapchat, then Instagram Stories, then Facebook Stories. What’s next? YouTube, of course!

YouTube has jumped on the story bandwagon and this makes sense as the video-dominant nature of stories coincides with YouTube as a video sharing platform. While on other social media platforms where every user is able to share their stories to their friends and followers, YouTube’s stories feature is in beta and is currently only available to creators with 10,000 + subscribers. And while on Facebook and Instagram you can view these stories on desktop as well as mobile, YouTube Stories are currently only available on mobile.

Creating and editing stories is very similar to that of the other platforms. According to YouTube:

“Creating with Stories is lightweight, easy, and fun. Stories will have the fun creation tools that you know and love. You can add text, music, filters, YouTubey stickers, and more to make your story uniquely you! To create a story, just open the YouTube mobile app, tap on the video camera icon, and select “Create Story.”

The stories bar is at the top of the app, above your subscriptions, showcasing the creators that you follow. However, you don’t have to be subscribed to the creator to see their stories. For non-subscribers, they will show in the “What’s Next” section under the video, as well as the homepage. If a non-subscriber is watching your story, they will also have the ability to subscribe to your channel directly from the story.

Instead of the typical 24-hour period that is standard for stories, YouTube Stories will be available for 7 days. This, of course, could change once this feature becomes available to more creators. The idea behind YouTube Stories was to give these creators another way to engage with their subscribers, aside from their highly-edited videos. It’ll be another way to include your subscribers into your creative process and give them insider looks or sneak peeks.

Comments are also available on YouTube Stories, where users can comment and react to other comments with a “thumbs up”, “thumbs down” or a “heart”. Creators will have the same comment moderation tools as video uploads on the site. Creators will also have the ability to reply to their subscribers’ comments with another photo or video that the whole community can see. However there could be a downside to this, as creators may not want to reply with another photo/video; instead, they might want to reply with another text comment.

Another downside that creators may find, is that there is no swipe up option (much like Instagram) where they could link to another video or just another link in general. Nonetheless, this is still in beta, so this could very well change as more creators give their feedback.

Wrapping Up

YouTube is the newest social media platform to join the stories trend. With this new feature still in beta, there are tons of opportunity for it to improve and ultimately benefit the creators that will be using it. Will it see as much success as Snapchat and Instagram did? And will Twitter or Pinterest join the Stories phenomenon soon? It wouldn’t be surprising. In fact, it would make a lot of sense!