Snapchat’s latest feature is like Tinder for current affairs, allowing you to swipe yay or nay on major stories.
Snapchat has evolved far beyond its humble beginnings where you got a momentary glimpse of your friend’s silly selfie face. You can now send short videos, chat one on one, or in the latest update, access Snapchat Discover.
Snapchat Discover Photo: Snapchat Discover
It’s not exactly like dating the news but Snapchat Discover does give you a snappy* way to select your daily information dose.
Swipe right past the usual snaps of your friend’s lunch to reach Discover where you’ll find 12 circular logos of different organisations including CNN, Vice, MTV, and National Geographic.
Tapping on one that tickles your fancy brings up content chosen by an editorial team from that organisation instead of filtered by its number of likes or trending hashtag.
The main difference to the normal social media barrage of information is how the content is presented. Each story is full-screen with no sideline links or notifications vying for the reader’s attention.
Take CNN for example. All up it offers just six stories.
The first story on the Winterstorm Juno attacking the east coast of the US has a two word headline, a one sentence summary and a video of a reporter speaking live from the snowstorm which, in true snapchat form, is less than ten seconds. Swipe up to get the full story with pictures or swipe left to turn the page for a new story; in this case, Ghosts of Auschwitz (swipe up for a haunting video tour of the deathcamp).
In a world flooded with content portals, Snapchat knows it has mere moments to convince millennials to spend their time engaging with its product and it doesn’t waste a second in trying to hook you.
It’s not just about news though; infotainment features strongly with highlights from MTV’s Ex on the Beach to Cosmopolitan providing tips on how to “never mess up your eyeliner again.”
Vice is there to cater for the keyboard activists, National Geographic will satisfy the internet’s “cat tax” requirements and Food Network will teach you how to make mac’n’cheese in a rice cooker.
Slimming down the news into snack-size is not an entirely new concept. Buzzfeed has long offered a quick fix with its listicles and pop culture “what ifs?” but also offers more serious news coverage for those who are that way inclined.
In an attempt to refine the news even further for the time-pressed youth, The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina launched the Charlotte Five in November last year which publishes five stories at the same time each day with a countdown to the next set. Each story is short and easy to consume, utilises other media such as tweets and links to longer versions where they exist.
But Discover collates a whole range of information from different platforms at the tips of your swiping fingers, catapulting it ahead of other organisations grasping for the attention of younger audiences.
Snapchat Discover installs with the latest update from Snapchat and at this stage is ad-free for New Zealand users.
*I take no responsibility for any injury caused by pun induced face palms.
Other neat things involving Snapchat.
- Audi and The Onion teamed up to use Snapchat during the 2014 Super Bowl to entertain the crowd with snaps about anything but sport.
- The New Zealand Transport Agency and Aotearoa’s coolest film director Taika Waititi teamed up to create a series of snaps about drug driving called Tinny Vision.
- US users can swipe their friends some real dollars via Snapcash which links up to a more secure third party app and for some unknown reason uses a Golddiggers 1933 parody to advertise it.
- Live snap coverage of events including the stars of Girls live-snapping the 2014 Red Carpet and compilations of holidays such as Australia Day.