Snapchat debuts new mobile-first content strategy

Snapchat isn’t just about self-destructing selfies anymore: the company intends to develop mobile-first approaches for every possible content type. Adding on to new user-generated Stories and real-time chat enhancements, Snapchat today introduced Discover, a new way for the app’s millions of users to find and consume article content on mobile.

Snapchat is about more than self-destructing selfies.

Taking a cue from Yahoo News Digest, the new section in Snapchat arranges news sources into a grid of bubbles, colored according to the recency of their content. Users can swipe between the day’s articles or video content within Snapchat itself, mirroring user flows which first debuted in Newsstand magazines and newspapers in iOS.

The feature is intended to make content from news providers like CNN and Vice News more relevant and digestible to mobile users, and represents Snapchat’s take on a mobile-first content strategy at scale. The service strives for easy digestibility and immediacy, and includes an obvious, top-level read and unread signifier to mobile readers.

Discover aims for digestibility and immediacy, with an obvious read and unread status on the top level.

For Snapchat, Discover helps keep users inside its app and digesting content. For the content providers, Discover represents a new way to immediately connect with millions of Snapchatters right in their pocket. The mobile-first content experiences inside Discover serve advertisements in video and image form, offering content producers new revenue outlets on mobile.

As Snapchat looks for new avenues to profitability beyond brand-sponsored Snapchat Stories, Discover offers a new content strategy that focuses on mobile-first delivery of content. The content approach prioritizes easy access and quick gestures between stories, a mobile-first interface strategy that matches Facebook Paper and Yahoo News Digest, the service’s likely inspirations.

Discover prioritizes easy access, gestures, and offering clarity recency to deliver relevant mobile-first content.

Snapchat, like Facebook before it, aspires to be much more than a straightforward mobile communication platform—and much more than a social network. As one of the most successful mobile-first social companies, dabbling with content delivery seems a natural evolution. Discover brings the same immediacy and low-investment engagement flows to content delivery, illustrating some of its most effective findings on mobile.

Facebook was a social company born on web, which grew to embrace content delivery and adopt a mobile-first development strategy. Snapchat, on the other hand, was a mobile-first company that has now dipped its toes into the best mobile-first content strategy practices. Soon, users won’t ask if you read something they linked to on Facebook—they’ll ask if you’ve watched it on Snapchat.