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YouTube is killing off “Stories” to focus on Shorts and Live

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YouTube is killing off a feature you probably weren’t using anyway and won’t miss. June 26th marks the death of YouTube Stories, a feature released in 2017 shortly before the company announced “Reels” – now YouTube Shorts. What made YouTube Stories different is that the videos were temporary, disappearing after a week. It also wasn’t available to users with fewer than 10,000 subscribers.

This 10K subscriber requirement almost certainly doomed YouTube Stories from the beginning. It remained in beta since its initial launch and never gained in popularity at all. In fact, I can’t recall a single time in the last six years that I’ve ever seen any of the creators I follow actually post a “Story”. Sure, there have been plenty of Shorts, but not Stories.

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Which social media platform will grow your photography business quickest?

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Which social media platform do you use to build your photography or video business? You are using at least one right? Done correctly, it can be an amazing addition in how you reach your potential clients. Done poorly, and it’s little more than a time suck.

But which platform should you be using? There are so many to choose from, and with the goal posts changing frequently it can be confusing. In this video, the guys from YCImaging posted every day for two weeks on three of the major apps: YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and TikTok to see which would build their audience the quickest.

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Seattle schools sue TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, and YouTube over students’ mental health and behavioral issues

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TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube; and their parent companies are facing yet another lawsuit over mental health issues in children. This time, it comes from Seattle’s public school district, claiming that apps have had a major role in the “youth mental health crisis.”

The district accuses social media platforms of causing a variety of mental health and behavioral issues in children and being “exploitive and manipulative.” According to the lawsuit, all these platforms are deliberately manipulating and exploiting users, targeting particularly the youngest ones among them.

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TikTok heading into YouTube territory with horizontal format option

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Just when you’d accepted the verticle video format, TikTok goes and pulls a surprise on all of us and starts testing out a new horizontal full-screen video format.

The trial has rolled out globally but only to selected accounts, so if you don’t see it yet, don’t be surprised. It’s allegedly still in beta testing. This nod towards YouTube follows on from earlier in the year when TikTok began allowing longer form videos of up to 10 minutes.

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New YouTube app update lets you convert your long-form videos into shorts on iOS and Android

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YouTube has updated its iOS and Android apps with a new feature that lets you convert up to 60 seconds from your existing long-form content YouTube videos into Shorts. The new feature offers all of the usual editing tools you’re used to from the YouTube app including text, timeline editor filters, etc. and will let you bring some of your older content back to the forefront of your feed.

As well as letting you pick pre-existing videos, you can also extend clips shorter than 60 seconds with the Shorts camera or upload more videos from your phone’s gallery to make it fill up to the 60-second Shorts limit. The new Shorts created from your previously-uploaded videos will also link to the original content where viewers can see the full length version.

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Nikon warns content creators of scammers pretending to be Nikon PR

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Well, this is an odd turn. Typically, it’s fake “influencers” pretending to be somebody else to try to scam companies out of free gear. This time, though, Nikon has put out an announcement stating that the opposite is true in their case and that people have been contacting content creators on Facebook and YouTube pretending to be Nikon themselves – and possibly other companies.

Nikon says that the scammers “may attempt to gain personal or financial information and exploit it for financial gain”, which is pretty much how all online scams work, but here Nikon says that they’re contacting creators requesting they make a gear using a Nikon camera and offering sponsorship opportunities.

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YouTube has changed how it enforces “Fair Use” after creator receives 150 copyright claims overnight

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This is an interesting case, but it might be an odd one to try to wrap your head around. Irish YouTuber Mark Fitzpatrick, otherwise known as Totally Not Mark, who has over 700,000 subscribers woke up one December morning to more than 150 copyright claims from Japanese anime company, Toei Animation – creator of shows such as Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and Slam Dunk – which threatened about three years worth of Mark and his team’s work.

According to reports, Mark says some of the content didn’t even include content owned by Toei and were simply how-to videos, explaining how to draw anime characters. It’s also believed that Toei had even asked Mark to do promotional work for them in the past. On the surface, it seems open and shut for YouTube, but it’s made them completely change how they implement “Fair Use” around the world.

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YouTube attempts to build positivity and reduce harassment by hiding the dislike count

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Nobody likes seeing dislikes on their videos, especially for smaller YouTubers just starting out. It can be very disheartening and put you off creating any more content at all. Some videos, naturally, deserve all the dislikes they receive, but many are simply the victim of trolls and haters.

Well, YouTube’s been experimenting recently and they’ve decided that they’re going to start hiding the dislike count. Their theory is that more trolls will be less likely to click the dislike button if they can’t see how many have come before them, thus reducing the harassment many YouTubers receive.

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Seven tips to shoot successful YouTube videos without showing your face

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Whenever I speak to people about starting up a YouTube channel, one of the biggest objections I hear is that they don’t want to be in front of the camera. They don’t want to be seen. Or at least, not initially. It can take time to build up the confidence to step in front of the camera if you’re not used to it. But is it possible to run a successful channel without getting in front of the camera?

Well, yes. It is. Of course, it does depend on the subject matter you want to present, but folks like AvE and Veg Oil Guy have been proving that the answer’s yes for quite a while now. And in this video, Justin Brown offers up a bunch of tips to help you understand how you can do it, too.

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We are all more than just “content creators”

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There’s been a term I’ve been hearing more and more creatives in the spaces we run in use to describe themselves: “content creator”. Even from people who work we admire and have learned from. To us, they’re people who inspire, educate, and entertain us. Both in photography and cosplay.

As I kept seeing that term come up my mind kept coming back to one question: why those words exactly?

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