A millennial explores Snapchat’s Discover (Day 2)

Day two continues of my challenge to consume a mix of news/non-news Discover channels on Snapchat for an entire week. Check out what I noticed on day one.

On day two, I noticed that some of the more newsier Snapchat Discover channels featured less ongoing/current news than they did interactive graphics or fluff pieces. I also noticed at least one channel reuse a story from day one too(but it made sense, see blow).

For this post, I’m going to break down what I liked from each channel and then list some takeaways/ideas that could improve user experience for millennials like me (one which involves more general promotion from Snapchat’s end).

Props for continued reporting on Paris

VICE

• I liked that VICE was staying up to date with the Paris attacks. Their first couple of slides had to deal with Anonymous declaring war on ISIS and details on the suspected mastermind behind the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
• There was an awkward transition from the Paris attacks to Missy Elliott facts. There should’ve been a transitional slide of sorts to ease into the change from hard to soft news.

VICE’s daily horoscope was one of the recurring slides from my first experiment on day one

• I also really liked their use of TL;DR portions of some of the stories. Each gave a pretty good summary of what the story was about, without forcing the reader to scroll through walls of text (something I’ve noticed some Discover channels dump their stories in and don’t provide any other graphics or photos within the story. It can be draining on the eyes)
• One thing though: If I wasn’t following VICE’s account on Snapchat, I had to wait to the very end of the story to find out what their handle was. If someone held to snap and tried to send it, they wouldn’t be able to unless they were already following VICE. I probably would’ve included VICE’s Snapchat name just so that people who weren’t already following VICE knew exactly where to send it.

Audio embed didn’t work in this story, which is a shame, it was a good one!

• I learned some multimedia elements don’t necessarily translate well on some stories. A (potentially copy/pasted) story about a company that breaks up for you had a part in it where you could listen to an audio recording of a break up message, courtesy of the company However, the recording didn’t play within the story itself. #womp

CNN’s Snapchat Discovery channel was all about Paris, and I was totally fine with that. Felt all caught up by the end of the story.

CNN

• If you wanted straight up news on Tuesday, CNN delivered with some really visual explainers on the Paris attacks and the aftermath. I was thoroughly impressed about their reporting.
• Each initial slide gave a good tease or the right amount of explainer info for me to be curious to learn more, or satisfied with the info given.
• Some slides were #longreads but photos or videos were dispersed throughout the story which kept my eyes alert and my thumb scrolling down to learn more. This was definitely my favorite Discover channel to swipe through on Tuesday.

Mashable

• Like I mentioned in my day one post, I like a call to action to snap and share content, and I think it’s a good reminder for users who may not know how to share a particular story with their friends on Snapchat.
• Once I figured out how to do that I was very surprised and pretty impressed how a shareable story had the organization’s logo on it (something I griped out on day one) and that it takes the user directly to the story in a seamless manner.
• One of Mashable’s slides was an “app of the day,” a really cool and simple slide that highlighted a particular app that could be useful to some users. My only qualm is small text. I wish it had been bigger to make it easier to read. Hope see more app of the day slides in the future.

BuzzFeed

• For some odd reason, BuzzFeed didn’t update their Snapchat Discovery story when I checked it at 2 p.m. PST on Tuesday.

Daily Mail

• Had decent content but nothing different from what I observed on day one.

National Geographic

• Same as Daily Mail except they had a really cool way to show time length of and intro slide before it repeated itself. A colorful border started at the bottom left of the intro slide and moved clockwise, changing colors every few seconds before the intro slide reset itself. Subtle, but clever.

Final thoughts and questions on day 2

• I think, depending on the content and the news cycle, some Discover channels should have a “table of contents” intro slide at the very beginning so that users know what kind of content to expect. That way they can swipe across to the stories they want to read.
• News organizations who are reporting on both hard and soft news should place some sort of transition slide between topics to help guide the reader from one story to the next. Transitional slides can come in handy when it could be tough to go from a hard news story to a light-hearted story or funny graphic
• What do I call stories that are on Snapchat Discover? Snapchat Discover Stories? Discover Stories? Discover channels? Snapchat Discover channels? Hmm..
• On day one (Monday) I consumed the stories at 10 a.m. On day two (Tuesday) I consumed some at 11 a.m. and some at 2 p.m. While I’d love to stay consistent, my work schedule has been a little uneven this week so today (day 3) I plan on reading most of these stories sometime in the evening when I get a chance.
• My girlfriend loves Snapchat but didn’t even realize Discover existed. That’s a problem seeing how Discover is right in everyone’s newsfeeds, but how are they being notified that there’s new/cool content to watch on these channels? Snapchat should maybe work on personalized push alerts within the app that let users allow certain Discover channels to send them updates on when the channel adds new content.

Didn’t see my day one observations? Check them out below.

A millennial explores Snapchat’s Discover (Day 1)

How often do you read stuff on Snapchat Discover? What’s your favorite Snapchat Discover channel? Leave a comment below!