Google announced yesterday that it’s discontinuing YouTube Stories on June 26. Google copied the same ephemeral Stories format popularized by Snapchat and Instagram a couple of years ago, but YouTube Stories never really got any significant traction.

Even though YouTube has been the leading video platform for years, Google added Stories on YouTube to allow creators to share short-form content without the pressure to create highly-polished clips. YouTube Stories also disappear after seven days, which is longer than what you get on other social platforms.

However, it certainly didn’t help that YouTube only made Stories available for YouTube channels with over 10,000 subscribers. YouTube Stories are also only visible on mobile, which definitely reduces their potential audience.

“While Stories are going away, we’ve seen that both Community posts and YouTube Shorts are great alternatives that can deliver valuable audience connections and conversations,” the YouTube team explained yesterday. Community posts are now available for all creators, while YouTube Shorts have been gaining traction despite the format being a clear ripoff of TikTok videos.

With TikTok being an ever-growing source and security and privacy concerns these days, Google now has a good opportunity to make YouTube Shorts gain more mindshare. “YouTube Shorts is the way to go if you want to create short video content or reach a new audience,” the YouTube team said yesterday. “Amongst creators who use both Shorts and Stories, Shorts on average drive many times more subscribers than Stories.”

Earlier this year, Google said that YouTube Shorts have been generating 50 billion daily views as of December 2022, and YouTube is also now offering different revenue-sharing opportunities to Shorts creators. To bring YouTube Shorts to more eyeballs, Google also recently made the short videos available on its YouTube apps for TV.