Sharing from Discover

Today, Snapchat will start allowing users to annotate and send pieces of content from Discover to their friends. The update isn’t live as of writing this, but the company posted a “How To” guide in their SnapChannel.

When Snapchat launched Discover a few months ago, it tried to change what media was created by giving media companies full control over what was featured to users. With this update, Snapchat is trying to influence how media is shared - privately to a friend, not publicly to a feed. While I’m a fan of Buzzfeed as a company, it’s not a coincidence that they aren’t a Snapchat partner.

I don’t expect this update to have an immense, immediate impact on user behavior, but it’s an indicator of where the company is going.

To start, this is the first time Snapchat is overlaying actions onto photos. It’s a big step and only the beginning. In the screenshot above, imagine the photo is of a piece of digital content and instead of saying “Tap to view the full story” it says “Tap to buy for $1.49”. Or imagine that I’m sending a friend a photo that Rihanna shared and the bottom said “Tap to follow Rihanna”. Actionable buttons overlaid on photos and ads are a huge opportunity.

In addition, Snapchat seems to have no plans to unbundle their app. In fact, it seems like they want bundle in as much as possible and are now even “deeplinking” between pages. Snapchat wants its content to be created exclusively for their platform, viewed exclusively on their platform, and shared exclusively within their platform.

Social apps go through natural lifecycles and companies are trying to figure out how to survive when they aren’t as “cool” as they once were. Facebook is diversifying its offerings by acquiring promising companies and unbundling to the extreme. Snapchat seems to be building a walled garden of content creation, viewing, and sharing, and will succeed if they can convince users to come to the app for that content in addition to sharing photos with friends.