YouTube rolls out the Stories feature to more creators

YouTube to launch a Story feature called Reels for Creators with over 10,000 subscribers.

The popular Stories featured introduced by Snapchat that was later cloned and adopted by Instagram, Facebook, Messenger is now making it's way to Google-owned video platform YouTube.

Last November, YouTube launched a feature that took inspiration from Snapchat Stories. Ever since the launch, the feature was accessible to only a very small number of creators on YouTube. As reported in March this year, the platform is calling this feature as YouTube Reels and the company confirmed the launch of a beta version of Reels in an announcement yesterday, mentioning the expansion of Community to creators with over 10,000 subscribers.

The company believes that as a creator, one is always looking to strengthen the relationship with their audience.

Reels is designed focusing on the Creator community, but the feature is available for brands and agencies with sizeable follower numbers.

Story creation is easy using the mobile app of the platform and tapping the video camera icon and selecting the 'Create Story' option. You can add text, music, filters, YouTubey stickers, and more to make the story unique!

Unlike other platforms the Reels (Stories) will not expire for 7 days and will be available on the app, to ensure that the fans have a chance to see it. Stories may show up to both subscribers on the Subscriptions tab and non-subscribers on Home and in the Up Next list below videos.

The platform has also added a comments section in Reels to let the audience be a part of the conversation. They can comment, thumbs up and thumbs down comments, and can also heart comments. YouTube's comment moderation tools that are available on video uploading are also available on Reels. The creator can directly respond to a comment with a photo or video and it will be publicly available for the community.

The feature looks engaging and creators/brands have a lot on the plate to experiment with, considering the shelf life of the content and the popularity of the platform amongst the community of influencers and creators. The very fact that the audience can publically engage within the comments section of Reels and the content is visible to non-subscribers also, opens the avenues for video creators to engage their viewers.

There are ads in YouTube Stories at this moment, but the popularity of the feature might lead to the inclusion.