Following closely on the heels of an app redesign late last year, Snapchat has made it easier for users to share and watch Snapchat videos outside of the app, even if they aren’t Snapchat users.
The company has made the “Discover” contents of its app more accessible to people who don’t use Snapchat. As of this past Tuesday, users will be able to share many Snapchat Stories to external platforms like Twitter and Facebook with a link. On Twitter, that means Snap videos will play natively, right inside the Twitter feed. On most other platforms, or via email and text messages, shared Stories will appear as a link that brings you to Snapchat’s website to watch the clip.
Image: Snap Inc.
This opening of the platform follows a change late in 2017 that helped to clean up and streamline the UX within the popular chat app. Thanks to the redesign, all of your personal content on Snapchat is now arranged on the “Friends” screen to the left of the main camera screen, while the premium content that’s typically published by news outlets, TV networks, or independent creators with big followings is corralled together on the right screen, the “Discover” feed.
Whether these changes will help the companies backslide is yet to be seen. Snap’s stock price has dropped 53% since its high earlier in 2017, and this plunge is thought to be (at least in part) because the app is too difficult for people to use, particularly users in the crucial over-34 demographic.
For now, the idea that Snapchat is more accessible and more sharable bodes well for the future (and for increased market share). As a public company, Snap has to think not just about how to innovate for and the keep the interest of its mainly millennial users. They now also have to cater to the public-at-large, and a more visible Snapchat is a strong step in the right direction.
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by Will Fanguy
Digital content wrangler | UX enthusiast | Recovering educator | Shameless nerd & GIF connoisseur | Hockey fan (Go Preds!) | Oxford comma or death | It’s pronounced FANG-ee
