It's hard being a media company. We get it. And now Snapchat gets it too.
Today, the ephemeral messaging company rolled a new tool into its news portal, Discover, letting people instantly trade clips of news stories with personalized comments and emoji. Hold down a news story, add a comment, and send to friends. It's easy. Just like the other “Snaps” you send on Snapchat.
When Snapchat first launched Discover in January, the portal's news stories were walled off so that you couldn't send them to anyone else, even within the app itself. That was a weird thing for Snapchat. A messaging company had created a portal with no messaging at all. But it was trying hard to bring people into its new app and keep them there. But now, it seems, Snapchat has learned what everyone in media already knows far too well—to get stories read, sharing matters. A lot. You can't just keep things in the walled garden.
Consumers increasingly get their news through a share: a friend sends a link, a colleague tweets a video, and a news organization posts an update on a social site. Sharing is part of the very DNA that makes both Twitter and Facebook so successful (and so huge)—and both companies have aggressively pursued options to bring in more news. Powerhouse BuzzFeed gets 75 percent of its traffic from those very social media sites driven by sharing, too. We find, we click, we read, we share. And then we do it again.
If Discover's new tool works, loyal Discover users will bring in new ones. Each news Snap includes an in-app link back to the original story. And, if it really works, users will Snap back and forth, sharing clips and conversing about the news. It'll bring viewership to Snapchat's media partners and brand name recognition to teens using the platform. Of course, it may not work.
Snapchat is hugely popular among millennials. But the news portal hasn't seen the same kind of success. Unlike with messages, where you check it and reply (and repeat), Discover has had a hard time getting its audience to come back. CNN's Discover content is said to reach roughly one million Snapchatters a day, a far cry from Snapchat's overall 100 million users, at least. And, while it was touted by some as the “the biggest thing since Twitter” following its launch, Discover has reportedly seen viewership drop an average of 30 to 50 percent since. (Snapchat declined to comment on specific numbers.)
That could change soon, too. The sharing update comes crucially in the month before some of Snapchat's media partner contracts are expected to expire. Discover could tweak its content, its lineup, or renegotiate its partnerships. But no matter what, viewership will be key. And to get views, you need shares. Someway, somehow.
