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Snapchat rolled out a feature that lets users share Stories with friends outside the app, in a bid to grow the app’s reach beyond its 178 million daily users, CNBC reports.
Previously, sharing Stories with others outside the app was circuitous, as users had to first download their Stories to their phones before sharing.
Snapchat Stories now have links that users can send to others via email or text message. Users can also embed Stories to third-party websites, similar to how tweets are embeddable. Shared Snapchat Stories created by one user disappear in 24 hours, while Stories created by multiple users disappear after 30 days. The sharing feature is currently only available to users with access to the redesigned Snapchat app.
The Stories-sharing feature can help Snapchat reach new audiences, encourage Stories creation, and lure influencers:
- The feature increases the discoverability of Snapchat content. Users are more likely to share Stories content with the simpler sharing process. Moreover, the feature means many social media and mobile users will be exposed to Snapchat Stories content for the first time. This can help Snapchat appeal to consumers outside of its mainly millennial user base, and could also help reverse slowing user growth. On the other hand, some people may opt to continually view Stories on third-party sites without signing up for an account, if enough Stories content is shared outside Snapchat. This could offset some of the user growth associated with the new sharing feature.
- Elevated discoverability can encourage users to post more Stories, which, in turn, could lead to ad revenue growth for the company. Snapchat users currently prefer to send messages to each other in-app, which is problematic because ads are played in between Stories, not within messages. But users may be more inclined to post Snapchat Stories if their content has a greater chance of being seen. That could enable Snapchat to grow its ad inventory and, subsequently, its ad revenue.
- Snapchat could attract more influencers to its platform. The increased discoverability of Stories makes Snapchat less of a walled garden, and Stories have a greater chance of going viral. Snapchat hasn’t historically focused on cultivating a large influencer base, but the company could shift its approach — loyal followers seeking influencer content could migrate to Snapchat, boosting the app's overall user base.
BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a detailed report on social video that:
- Assesses the evolving social video landscape, with attention to Facebook, YouTube, Snap, and Instagram.
- Analyzes the relative strengths of each platform from a product, distribution, audience, and monetization perspective.
- Looks at what’s next for the industry, so that media creators and brands can invest for the future.
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