Last year, Snapchat took its first big iterative step with the launch of Stories, which let users string together all of their snaps from the latest 24 hours into a single, fluid narrative. The company has since gone on to add text and video chat, transforming it from a simple photo-sharing app into a full-fledged messaging platform. And today, Snapchat is digging even deeper with the introduction of “Our Story”
“Our Story” is slightly reminiscent of Color in that it lets you add Snaps to a single, event-based Story with your friends. And it requires no update.
The idea is that whenever you’re at a big event — take, for example, the Electric Daisy Carnival where “Our Story” will debut — an option to add to that event’s Story will appear just below the option to add it to your own Story. The entire group of attendees, regardless of friendship within the app, can post to a single stream of event awesome.
Users who follow that event brand on Snapchat — in this instance, it would be EDC Live — can then see everyone’s snaps from the event in a single place. “It makes you feel like you’re right there!” according to Snapchat’s official blog post.
To get an idea of how this will work, you can check out Snapchat’s video below.
Snapchat Stories, to me at least, never felt like they really took off, though Snapchat says that around 50 percent of their users view their friends’ stories as of February. However, early Snapchat users that fell in love with truly disappearing content may be less enthused by the idea of a collective record of all their private Snap-spondence.
Still, the introduction of a living timeline is something that hasn’t been done before by other social networks, and has the potential to offer a very interesting interactive profile to Snapchat, which is rapidly becoming a huge contender in the global messaging space. By adding a layer of location to that, Snapchat can not only get more engagement out of Story users, but it has the opportunity to do sponsorship deals with large events.
Snapchat hasn’t clarified which events will have “Our Story” functionality, nor have they explained if or how this will generate revenue, but we’ve reached out for further information.