Snapchat & Journalism
Snapchat a journalistic tool! Yeah that was my first reaction as well. Snapchat began as an idea in 2011 by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. The original name for the app was Picaboo, but with a name already being used elsewhere to avoid condition a new name was made bringing the birth of Snapchat. As of late 2011 shortly after the launch of the new app, there were over 1,000 daily users. By 2012 that amount exploded to about 100,000 users every day. This spike in activity caused the company to think about expanding from just the Apple app store to other devices like Android. Things with the app have changed over the years, but the most notable is the popularity of the app. There are over 150 million users, and the company is to be valued at approximately 20 billion dollars. Beneath is an excellent article which gives a more detailed history from the beginnings of the app to today.
While all these people seem to be flocking to the app, many companies are taking there the time when it comes to utilizing it for professional purposes. At first, the app didn’t have the best rep, being known for an easy way to send quick nudes to someone. This could be an apparent reason some have stayed away from it for so long not wanting any part in it. Over time we see what has become of Snapchat, and the powers of the app are quite astounding. I will start with pure numbers and that 16.5 million people use Snapchat on daily basses. This 16 million is an entirely demographic than the population picking up the T.V remote; they are a younger group of individuals. Another crazy studied showed that on average Snapchat users spend 25–30 minutes on the app. That’s like watching a 3o minute news broadcast.
Many companies have started to use Snapchat on a daily basis, like ESPN, NBA, and most individual sports teams. On the Discover page, there are many different tabs to ranging from The Walk Street Journal the Food Network. Companies like ESPN are taking the app seriously; Joseph Litchterman interviewed the vice president of ESPN Chad Millman about a year ago. When asked about the use of Snapchat and what it has been like for the company Millman responded “It’s been a great experience for us so far. The team that works on it does a phenomenal job, and we think about things differently because of the Snapchat platform. All of that carries over into what we’re doing with the rest of our video. We get a sense of what’s tracking well. We get a sense of how to have a little bit more fun. We get a sense of how to engage an audience in a different way.” Millman was also asked if they had a completely different staff to run Snapchat to which he responded yes.
My personal opinion on Snapchat being incorporated for professional users is that, it’s a good idea. Not only does it expand your audience range and potentially reach a younger audience its simple just an app that has nothing else like it. Snapchat was compared by my good friend Victor Mwangi to Twitter. It gives you that 10 seconds max view time which is a character limit for Twitter. It is the visual version. For my person experience, I would pick that visible 10 seconds over that 150 character tweet. When it comes to local news station using the app, it can be tricky. I would say the ideal thing would be if the app would allow news organization to appear in the Discover feed depending on where the user was. The only problem with this idea is that there would probably be a fee for anyone who wanted to appear in this location. Let’s just say there wasn’t a fee and any official news organization could go through a process to get them selfs on this page. It would be perfect for a couple of reason, or at least better than just a news station posting a story on the companies Snapchat handle. The Discover tabs allow for embedded material. Like a swipe up to read more, or better a swipe up to watch. You could almost just upload a newsrooms rundown and just swipe right to go to the next story.