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Snapchat is reportedly working on introducing a new algorithm that will determine the ranking of new content from brands and media accounts in user feeds, Digiday reports.
Currently, when a user opens up Snapchat and navigates to the Story page — the landing page where Snapchat Discover, Live Stories, and individual account stories live — content from accounts that a user follows — whether friends, media companies, brands, or celebrities — are displayed in a ranking based on which accounts updated their stories most recently.
Now, Snapchat is apparently looking to introduce a different algorithm that will give the company more control over what a user sees first in the feed. While specific details surrounding the upcoming algorithm are largely unknown, many suspect that the algorithm will mimic Facebook's News Feed, where the order of content that appears on the News Feed is based on that user's interests or previous engagement.
The move could be a welcome move for publishers that are not a part of Snapchat's Discover feature. Discover partners —including Daily Mail, Vox, MTV — have their accounts featured on a Discover landing page that all users are able to access. For reference, Discover is a content portal where partnering publishers have their own "channels" that they post new content to every 24 hours.
But for those publishers that want to reach Snapchat's audience but don't want to invest in creating lots of new Snapchat native content every 24 hours, getting discovered on the platform is harder. Publishers not on Discover have to create their own private accounts and encourage audiences to "follow" these accounts to view content.
Content from these accounts then gets placed into a user's Story feed along with all the other content from every account that user follows. In the current system, if a user follows a lot of accounts and the publisher does not post frequent updates, then its content can be lost in the feed.
A new algorithm based on user preference (the frequency with which a user watches that account's content) would help publishers elevate their content to the top of the feed among engaged viewers. But it's important to note, it could also have the reverse effect. Publishers that are not engaging to their followers would further fall in the feed.
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