youtube shorts Archives

At this point, it feels like stories have become the most common form of communication when it comes to social media. Creators now maximize their stories as opposed to posts in order to update their followers about their life happenings. While stories on Instagram and Snapchat seem to be soaring high, YouTube is going in the opposite direction and bidding them goodbye. Starting next month, YouTube will no longer support stories.

YouTube bids goodbye to stories

The Google-owned video-streaming giant YouTube will be ending support for stories starting on June 26. The company aims to direct its attention to other essential features like Shorts, Community Posts, Live Videos, and more. YouTube said in a blog post recently – “Starting on June 26, 2023, the option to create a new YouTube Story will no longer be available. Stories that are already live on that date will expire seven days after they were originally shared,”

Additionally, the company also revealed that the creators will be notified about the shutdown of YouTube Stories via a variety of channels including forum posts, reminders in YouTube Studio, in-app messages and more. While YouTube is bidding farewell to stories, the video platform suggested that both “Community posts and YouTube Shorts are great alternatives that can deliver valuable audience connections and conversations”.

According to the company, creators who wish to share lightweight updates, promote new videos and start conversations with their audience can do so effectively with community posts. However, the restriction of not being able to post videos in the community posts may stick out as a sore thumb.

Besides this, the company also believes that YouTube Shorts is the way to go for users who wish to create short-form content and reach a wider audience. YouTube also shared that shorts drive more subscribers to a creator’s channel than stories. In an oversaturation of stories on various social media channels, getting rid of them from the most prominent video-sharing platform is a surprising move, to say the least.

It looks like there is no escape from the vertical form of content. Yes, even on your Smart TVs! YouTube has announced that it will be expanding its Shorts on TV for global users. This means next time you decide to take a break from scrolling through vertical videos on your phone, you will be able to do the same on your television.

YouTube Shorts on TV

Alphabet-owned YouTube is launching Shorts on the big screen with a design that is created to adapt to the TV screen’s form factor. The vertical content will be displayed on the TV screen at the center with white borders surrounding it. The background of the Shorts theme will be based on the main color theme of the YouTube shorts clip. Besides the adaptive background, details of the Shorts like audio details, creator name, like/dislike, and the overflow menu will appear on the side. The company recently shared a blog post where it revealed this new addition to the YouTube Smart TV app.

Much more like the YouTube mobile app, Shorts will not autoplay after one ends and users will have to manually go to the next Shorts by using the remote. The company also revealed that it tested out a number of designs for the Shorts TV layout. One of the designs included multiple Shorts populating the screen at the same time. However, this design was later ruled out as it did not resemble the vibe of Shorts as a whole which features one video at a time. The rejected layout of Shorts was named ‘Jukebox’ style by YouTube.

In conclusion, YouTube wrote – “As YouTube continues to make it easier to interact on TV, the richness of the Shorts experience will only grow. Bringing Shorts to TV is a great bridge to bring two of our most important experiences together to benefit both creators and viewers. Over the coming weeks, this experience will be rolling out on TV models (2019 and later) and on newer game consoles. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!”