Is Snapchat Newsworthy?
I’ll admit it…when Snapchat first came out, I thought it was, for lack of a better word, stupid. What was the point? Take a selfie of yourself, caption it “I hate Mondays” and send it to everyone?
Now, just a little while later, Snapchat has grown on me infinitely and it has also grown on the rest of the population. IBM Statistics report that, “a quarter of global Snapchat users access the service more than once per day, and the app ranks ahead of Tumblr and Twitter in terms of U.S. Millennial user engagement.”
Edison research reports that Snapchat is the 4th most used social media app out there. Not bad, right? Cudos Snapchat! You’ve only been available for about five years and look what you’ve done in that time, very impressive. Take a gander at these other statistics below:
100 million daily active users? 400 million snaps per day? WOW. Those statistics are mind-boggling to imagine. They typically reach the younger generation and interestingly enough, most users are female (must be all those flower crown filters).
So what do people do on Snapchat if so many people are using it? Well businessofapps.com broke it down for us:
Let’s ignore the sexting portion of the population since clearly that won’t advance our society anywhere new or productive. Let’s focus on what 87% of people report they are using it: for creativity, keeping in touch, and they say it’s easier than texting. This is all great data, proving that Snapchat is a great app to reach out to a younger audience and allow everyone to connect in a totally different platform than Facebook and Twitter provide. Everyone should use it, including… you guessed it… news organizations and journalists.
Unfortunately in the weeks I have been following VICE News on Snapchat, they have not posted once. I consider this to be a disservice, because the potential audience reach in Snapchat is, as our president would say, “HUGE.” Big stations and news providers like the New Yorker Magazine and CNN News are on Snapchat, but as I was doing this assignment, I found a few others that I really enjoyed. (Now I’ve added a whole bunch of new Snapchat accounts that I love from doing this assignment, so thank you Brett!)
By going to this website, I found a whole slew of news related organizations and journalists that were recommended to follow on Snapchat based on their posts and how well they use their account. The very first organization listed actually caught my eye:
AJENews, or Al Jazeera News in English, is an amazing account to follow. Not only do they reach a large audience and engage their Snapchat followers with interviews on camera and updates during important events about Syria, the Middle East and significant social justice stories.
I added the account, and was pleased with what I saw. The first snap showed their audience where the two journalists were in a beautiful video of Switzerland. In the next video snap, they explained they were there to cover the peace talks taking place, and then showed us a picture of all of the press waiting to cover the talks.
It all made me feel as if I was there with the journalists, making me immediately interested in what they were covering and curious to follow up on the story. If more organizations did this on a local level, I bet it would drive their audience reach up and actually draw their community together. Snapchat makes you feel connected to who you follow, because you are seeing something visual and immediate in their life. If local news stations were doing a profile on a new local business in town, using Snapchat to show their viewers just what the business is all about would be a perfect way to draw back the curtain for everyone.
The last account I wanted to share is Liz Plank’s Snapchat. Her description on ijnet.org drew me in, so I decided to check her out.
That kind of journalist is EXACTLY what I aspire to be. So, I immediately added her on Snap to see for myself.
Liz Plank did not seem concerned with coming off as super polished an professional. Instead, she was funny and relateable, which is perfect for a social media app that mostly reaches the younger generations. She shared where she was going tomorrow (now today), which was CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. She then invited all of her Snapchat followers to send her questions that they want her to ask, which in my opinion is journalistic genius. This way, the audience feels engaged and that their thoughts matter, and Liz gets to know what her audience is concerned about and what they are thinking, which is vital for a journalist to know when covering any story. She even tagged her Twitter handle for people to send her ideas and questions! Genius, I tell you…genius.
If other local news organizations or VICE News did this, it would be good for both their outreach and their audience themselves. I think Snapchat allows people to feel involved and engaged, and the sooner that news organizations and other journalists see this, the better.
