A source familiar with the matter said about 15 curators who worked local stories have lost their jobs in NY and Los Angeles.
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While Snapchat won’t be producing daily stories anymore that showcase what people are posting in a given city for the local audience to check out, it’s not entirely exiting the local space.
Snapchat is reportedly putting an end to its daily Local Stories feature for certain cities in an attempt to focus on live events. The curated snaps were often surprisingly entertaining and, thanks to captions and editing from those 15 Snapchat employees, the stories felt seamless and far better produced than the clunky stories my friends and I regularly post.
In fact, Snapchat’s Stories section is so popular that other major applications like Instagram made a decision to provide its users with similar features.
The company is now experimenting with a version of its normally public, big event Our Stories that feature Snaps from a certain location that can only be seen by people nearby. But Snapchat likely didn’t need them given how much other video it has for people to watch. It’s not clear if Discover is any more popular, but Snapchat would probably rather have people watching video from that section instead.
Part 1) Snapchat’s image-recognition technology has gotten a lot better at identifying different snaps that are tied to the same scene since Snapchat incorporated it past year into its Story Explorer feature.
Snapchat had an undisclosed number of staff members who curated images and videos submitted by users in five cities including New York, Los Angeles and Paris to feature in the local stories section. It’s unclear if Snapchat will continue using humans to curate its Live Stories for big events and national news.
Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011.
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As closely held Snapchat builds its business model ahead of an eventual initial public offering, the Los Angeles-based company is evaluating its products and strategy.
