New YouTube Feature ‘Reels’ is a New take on Stories

Stories, which was first introduced on Snapchat and later was embraced by Instagram, Skype, Facebook, and Messenger as proven to be a pretty popular. It’s gotten so popular that YouTube’s now releasing their own take of the feature, calling it "Reels."

YouTube revealed the Reels feature in a recent announcement, which was geared towards talking about the future expansion of YouTube’s Community tab to creators with our 10,000 subscribers.

In response to TechCrunch, YouTube revealed that the idea of Reels is to essentially introduce a new video format on YouTube, letting creators engage with their audience without having to make a full video.

In Reels, creators will shoot a few videos up to 30 seconds and have the option to add elements like filters, music, and text. But what makes Reels different from Stories is that the Reels you create will never expire. Viewers can also give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to Reels, and they can post comments.

Now, the Reels are said to posted onto a separate tab on their creator’s channel, allowing viewers to chooses if they want to go and watch them. But that could change if Reels prove to be popular. YouTube said to TechCrunch that if Reels become popular, they could end up showing up on the viewer’s YouTube home page as recommendations.

In regards to other changes being made to Community, YouTube says that now a creator’s most engaged viewers will see Community posts in their Home feed on YouTube (even if they are not subscribed to that creator’s channel.) In addition, notifications will now optimized, meaning that fans aren’t being bombarded with every new post on Community.

It isn’t clear when Reels will be released to the public, but there’s expected to be a beta version first.

Sean Berry
Sean Berry
Sean Berry is Videomaker's managing editor.

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