Snapchat, the temporary media-sharing app, has quickly become commonplace among news outlets, both through the “Discover” feature and by posting daily stories, much like a typical snapchat user.
The “Discover” feature was released about a year ago, expanding the app beyond sharing photos and videos between personal networks of friends. “Discover” stories allow users to explore daily stories by publication outlets such as Vice, Mashable, National Geographic, Vox and most recently, WSJ. Snapchat Discover stories are structured as a slideshow which the user can swipe through. Usually, each panel is accompanied by a story, which the user can choose to scroll down to read and share with their friends (notably, with the normal drawing / emoji annotations that a user can do with any other snap they send).
What separates Snapchat Discover stories from other web-based posting is that in Snapchat, you can’t link to content anywhere else — the user is forced to consume the story within Snapchat without clicking on external links or enlarging photos. From my personal observations, there seems to be two camps of Snapchat publishing philosophies: one, use each slide for a separate story (like reading the headlines from a newspaper) or two, focus on a particular issue or moment and present different perspectives on that particular story. For example, WSJ tends to present stories in the first format while Vox takes the second approach, using slides to present infographics on a story or quotes from interviewees.
Lately, publishers have been taking to Snapchat to engage with users in a more typical Snapchat fashion by posting daily stories. Users can add publishers by username (for example, “npr”). This particular use of Snapchat lends itself to a more interactive experience — for example, NPR will often explicitly solicit feedback from users viewing a Snapchat story, and users can send photos, videos or text in response. For example, most recently, NPR posted to Snapchat about the Bernie Sanders / Hillary Clinton meme, asking if it was sexist and to reply by “snapping” back. In addition, reporters tend to appear in these stories in a very casual format and basically have conversations (albeit in 10-second segments) about a story that they’re reporting on at the moment.
As for the implications Snapchat has for the future of news and storytelling, it’s clear that Snapchat is a medium which encourages interactivity in a different medium than other forms of social media — not only among friends, but now between users and publications, which previously was a large barrier. Publishing daily “Discover” stories encourages publishers to be deliberate about using only a few slides and tailoring their content to millennials — an issue that is top of mind for publishers today.