Snapchat has recently rolled out its Discover feature to its messaging app. This new section delivers concise “bite-sized” news pieces from major publications. This helps to news veteran sites to reach the younger generation. The question that marketers might be asking themselves is whether this type of content partnership will alienate search engines and bring new SEO concerns for content marketing.
The app started out initially as a photo application. Snapchat Discover is built on top of the original app, with the photo feature gaining lesser prominence. The new Discover feature allows users to browse news stories in the same native Snapchat experience. The news stories can be quickly browsed through. If a news catches the attention of the reader, the latter can then swipe up to read or watch the story within the app. The news piece would not be opened from external links. This ensures that the news items is displayed quickly without the usual delay to load content from external sites. The content would be uniquely written and formatted to fit Snapchat.
If this new Snapchat Discover model turns out to be successful, this will pave the way for other social networking apps to start exclusive partnerships with publishers. It is rumored that Facebook is already involved in talks with publishers to similar partnerships.
The implication for SEO and web marketers would be to start trying the Snapchat experience firsthand. Discover might prove to a good way to target the younger generations and future developments would need to be watched out for.