Stories are a trendy feature to add to your mobile apps lately, with Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and others all jumping on the Stories bandwagon. Now YouTube is doing it, too.
YouTube announced today that it's adding its own version of stories to its service. Called Reels, YouTube says that the feature is a way for YouTube creators to connect with their audience.
There are a couple of other differences between Reels and other apps' Stories besides the name. YouTube says that creators' Reels won't expire and that they can have multiple Reels happening at once. YouTube is also going to let creators link to their videos in Reels and use "YouTube-y stickers".
Reels are a part of YouTube's Community feature that's available to creators with 10,000 or more subscribers. Community helps creators to connect with their fans with posts, polls, texts, GIFs, and more.
YouTube also notes that Reels is currently in beta and that it plans to experiment with the feature and improve it before making it available to more creators.
YouTube probably isn't one of the first apps you'd think of when trying to name apps that would add a Stories-like feature, but the good news is that it sounds like YouTube is at least adapting the Stories formula to make it a good fit for its service.
