YouTube Expands Stories To All Creators With More Than 10k Subscribers

Around this time last year, YouTube introduced its own Instagram-like Stories, a new feature that enables users to share short mobile-only videos. The Stories feature was introduced in beta and only made available to select users at the time, but now YouTube is expanding it to all creators who have at least 10,000 subscribers.

YouTube originally introduced its feature under the name Reels, later changing it to YouTube Stories. This past summer, the company promised to expand Stories' availability to more creators, and now that time has arrived. Starting today, any YouTube creator with at least 10k subs can publish their own Stories.

It's easy to see where YouTube's inspiration for Stories may have come from — it is similar to Snapchat's, Instagram's, and Facebook's own Stories feature. There's one big exception, though, and it's that YouTube's short mobile-only videos will stay live for seven days instead of only 24 hours.

According to Google's support page for YouTube Stories, users can share Stories by signing into their account in the YouTube app, then tapping the video camera icon. From there, a "+" Story option will be presented — tap it and then hold the capture button to record a short video.

Users can also take a photo by tapping (instead of holding) the capture button. Alternatively, users can select an existing image or video from their phone and add it to their Story. The feature includes various editing options, such as trimming, adding music/stickers/text/filters, and saving to the camera roll.

Stories are found under a channel's Stories tab; both subscribers and non-subscribers can view them. As with regular videos, viewers can leave comments and creators can respond to them. The feature includes comment moderation support, and shared short videos can be deleted by the creator.