The new Reels function is the latest example of a tech company chasing the popular stories format.
YouTubeGet ready to watch a lot more bite-size videos on YouTube.
Reels, a feature announced Wednesday, lets YouTube’s “creator” community string together videos of up to 30 seconds long to fashion a sort of playlist separate from their other work.
It’s the latest example of a tech company borrowing from Snapchat’s popular “stories” function, which was instrumental in making Snapchat one of the hottest social networks around, with more than 178 million people logging in each day. Facebook in particular followed this trend, introducing a stories-like feature to its Instagram photo sharing service and its namesake app as well.
“We want to do even more to give you easy ways to express yourself and engage with fans,” YouTube said in a blog post announcing the feature.
Reels will be tested with a group of about 100 creators sometime “soon,” the company said.
