The update revamped the entire Discover page into a more user-friendly section with headlines and feature images.
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Snapchat has made its app easier to use for new users and overhauled its Discover section to make it simpler to find live stories and to subscribe to publishers. The very popular Live Stories feature, which comprises of user contributions from all over the world, has been more popular than publisher stories, which will now be available on “Stories” and “Discover” page. According to a Recode report previous year, more people check out Discover channels by tapping on the logos listed on the Recent Updates tab – which is where people go to view the public Stories posted by people they follow, such as friends, celebrities, brands and media companies – than by tapping on the logos listed on the Discover tab. The new Snapchat redesign greatly simplifies the app’s look. Snapchat had previously assigned same circles used for friends to publishers, which ensured that there was not much difference in publishers and their content. However, a lot of publishers have recently complained that they just receive a small fraction of Snapchat’s traffic. It’s also now possible for users to subscribe to publisher content so that it is automatically added to their Recent Updates.
Now, directly below your own story, you’ll see some headlines you might want to explore from publishers like CNN, Refinery29, PCMag’s sister site IGN, and more. Publishers will now be locked in a race to grow their subscriber numbers on the app, as the metric would become an important one if Snapchat decides to push through with plans of an algorithmic feed for users similar to Facebook. Or let’s say you loathe all sports – now you don’t have to see ESPN on your main page. The Discover page now has 19 different publishers, but Snapchat has yet to reveal the number of viewers for these stories. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, analysts estimate that Snapchat now boasts a user base of roughly 130 million users per day, which is supposedly a larger user base than that of Twitter. That means users with multiple active accounts count as only one person in our estimates, which also ignore active accounts such as bots. Before the dynamic previews, the buttons for different publishers looked the same each day and weren’t very attractive.
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The left-most part of the app is dedicated to chatting only, while the right-most part is for Stories.
