It seems like YouTube has fully embraced Stories for its platform. The video streaming website announced its own version of Stories last year. The platform also released its own take on Vine’s short video format called Reels.
YouTube changed the name of the feature to “YouTube Stories” and announced at VidCon 2017. The feature was only made available to a few select YouTube channels. YouTube announced in June that the feature will be available to every channel that has more than 10,000 subs.
The feature has finally been made live. YouTube has also decided to give creators the option to adds stickers, filters and text bubbles among other cool add-ons to the Stories. You might be asking what makes this feature any different from Snapchat’s or Instagram’s Stories.
Essentially there isn’t much difference except YouTube Stories disappear after seven days and not 24 hours. The idea behind Stories is to increase creators’ engagement with fans. This can be done without having to put extra effort into editing and polishing videos.
Content creators put a lot of time and energy into editing, writing scripts and directing their videos. Youtube Stories will minimize this effort to produce more content in a short time. This is a convenient way to create micro vlogs on the go.
Viewers will also be able to “heart” react each Story, give it a thumbs up or down and leave comments as well. According to YouTube, the same comment editing options are available on YouTube Stories as the ones available on the videos.
YouTubers will be able to respond to viewers’ comments by sending videos or even photos. The response will be made public for everyone to see.
It is also a good way to show behind the scenes footage or a sneak preview of an actual upcoming video. The channels that got to try the feature was quite tiny and included the ones with more than 70,000 subscribers.
YouTube creators can film a new Story by opening the YouTube app, tapping on the video camera icon, then selecting “Create Story,” if they have the option available to them. Followers of the channel can also leave comments on the Stories.
YouTube Stories will appear on the Subscriptions tab for subscribers and will be displayed on Home and in the Up Next list below videos for non-subscribers. Before YouTube Stories, creators had to point their fans to Twitter or their Instagram to give them behind the scenes look or updates on their projects.
YouTube wants to make its platform an all in one place to give a sneak peek into the lives of their favorite YouTubers.
The company will need to stand out from the rest of the pack, as everyone has created a version of the Stories. The feature which was originally created by SnapChat has been “adopted” by a plethora of social media apps. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the primary culprits of “being inspired” by Snapchat’s Stories features.
It remains to be seen if YouTube Stories will truly stand out or just be another clone in a long line of Stories clones.
Fazeel Ashraf
Areen Zahra
