Reports have reached us that Snap is working on a new feature that will let users share stories outside the Snapchat app. The feature, which is to be titled “Stories Everywhere,” is designed to boost Snapchat’s presence beyond the level of a core mobile app as the competition of Snapchat with Facebook and Instagram heats up.
Since it went public in February, Snap has had to deal with a slug user growth as well as a decline in revenue. Also, the company suffered an unfathomable third quarter this year as disappointing figures in both those departments sent shares into a dive. There are a number of factors that are responsible for this; one of which is Facebook’s ability to copy and reproduce Snap’s core features and place them in more popular and easily reached products like Instagram.
Snap has since been committed to making Snapchat more user friendly, starting with a redesign now being released although it is only available to a small percentage of users. A portion of the redesign includes a more focused Discover feed, which would enable Snapchat users to get news and entertainment from professional print, TV, and online outlets. It is still vague how much the modification will affect user growth, but Snap currently seems to be putting resources toward increasing the presence of both its user-generated and professionally crafted content across the larger web ecosystem.
There are reports that former Storyful CEO Rahul Chopra, who was also an executive at News Corp, is heading the “Stories Everywhere” project at Snap with the aim being to increase user growth and also to make Snapchat a more engaging platform for news, sports, and other premium video and editorial content. The idea behind “Stories Everywhere” is to make sure that stories shared on news sites and everywhere else on the internet may cause more people to sign up for the app.
