Yesterday Snapchat launched their new 'Discover' feature - daily stories from a collection of media partners, including Yahoo News, Mail Online, Cosmopolitan, Vice, MTV, Comedy Central, CNN and more.
When you open the tab and tap on an icon, you get about 5 stories - swipe down to get more of the story, from right to left to get a new story, and up to close.
Stories can include video or text. The Yahoo News feed, of example has Katie Couric presenting news stories. Items are quite 'tabloid' - the Mail has stories about The Kardashians, and also US-focussed - the New York blizzard for example.
The providers vary by country. In the video above it shows that US has ESPN and Comedy Central, which we don't get in the UK (rights reasons, presumably), but sport is covered here by Bleacher Report.
It seems to work seamlessly, and I'm sure will get lots of traction. You can also see brand feeds integrated - maybe Coca Cola for The Olympics next year, for example. I'm not sure what the deal is with the channels - who pays who? - but I'm sure this will become clearer.
Update - the channels can sell ads, and share revenue with Snapchat, according to AdWeek:
"Snapchat has been working on Discover for months with major media companies to plan their channels, and there will be advertising on them, according to sources. The media companies will be able to sell ads and share revenue with Snapchat, sources said.
"They're going to have publishers posting daily content to micro-sections of Snapchat that can be monetized," said a top digital ad executive with clients who have been pitched on buying ads in Discover. "[If] Maybelline wants to advertise on the Cosmo section, they negotiate with Cosmo."
It completely changes the Snapchat experience for me - few of my friends use Snapchat - and will probably greatly add to the experience for regular users.
It also puts Snapchat up against Facebook and Twitter more than ever before - it's now a place to go on your phone to find out about what's happening in the world, and not just for messaging.
(It also shows how seriously Snapchat is being taken for Mail Online to be a partner, because it's only a year since they were much more negative about Snapchat)
Read all about it here
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