In recent news, Snapchat has partnered up with 4 news discovery platforms: Storyful, NewsWhip, SAM Desk and Tagboard. All of these platforms are news-orientated, targeting regularly updated content which can be distributed globally.
This is another bold venture for Snapchat considering earlier falls in the prior months of app usage, with celebrities like Kylie Jenner admitting they no longer use the app as much. Earlier research highlighted only 20% of Snapchat users (on average) actually consumed content from publisher’s Discover edition daily (UK Business Insider). Although, this was identified in January, and the app itself has come a long, long way since then. From controversial updates, to geo-filters, and now further improvement of their Story Kit.
This partnership essentially means all four platforms are entitled to access and distribution of news content – all posted within the app, of course. Alongside this, the four platforms are entitled to access of selected shared content on the Discover channel. This select group includes: NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, NowThisNews, and The Economist. Finally, there is also access to Snapchat’s in-house curated content.
Snapchat have tactfully partnered with these 4 platforms to target specific mediums for their app. Listed below is a quick outline of the four platforms Snapchat has partnered with:
- Storyful is a tool used for sourcing, verifying, and acquiring, social content for brands and clients. In this particular case, this is will be social video content. Storyful intends to leverage Snapchat’s API to create a video content feed including geolocation and time-stamping. This will create the possibility for the platform to sequence breaking news events with the videos sourced from Snapchat.
2. NewsWhip prioritises the importance of insights and trends that impact audiences on a global scale. Whether this be through websites, stories, and general posts across the world. From this, they are able to predict news story engagement for clients and brands.
3. SAM Desk is an artificial intelligence tool, targeting breaking news from social media data. From this, SAM Desk groups targeted social content from their algorithms to alert your company or brand with alerts and context surrounding developing news stories and/or events worldwide.
4. Finally, Tagboard is typically used by broadcasting networks, brands and teams to produce quality social content for the client’s own purposes.
With solid partnerships between dynamic platforms, Snapchat will change the game of published content on their discover channel. Despite prior anxieties of Snapchat’s discover section, they seem to show no fear regarding this. Instead, they are fighting back the rumours by improving their content and investing in help. Finally, they are investing more time (and money) in their published content.
