Read original story on: AdAge
We reported last week that Snapchat is venturing into original content with its new Discovery feature, and now the company is taking that foray one step further. On Tuesday, Snapchat announced a “scripted series” of mini-movies made by social media stars and sponsored by AT&T. Dubbed “SnapperHero”, the soon-to-debut 12-episode original web series marks an important step in Snapchat’s continuing evolution from messaging app to media platform.
Read the original on: The Verge
This week, both Snapchat and Tumblr unveiled plans to move into content marketing. Snapchat will start pushing original content created by its newly hired media team through its new Discovery feature. Meanwhile, Tumblr announced the launch of the Creatrs Network, which essentially acts as a creative agency for Tumblr users that will help connect them with brands and other organizations that want to utilize their original content. Despite such different areas of focus, both companies are exploring new ways to engage with their audience via quality content.
Read original story on: Ad Age
Snapchat employed a special edition of “Our Story” streams, its live-event based feeds, to cover Sunday night’s American Music Awards, with the first-ever brand sponsorship of the feeds by Samsung. Back when the feature first launched in June, we wondered whether it could be a new revenue driver for the messaging app, and now it looks like Snapchat has found a way via sponsorship.
Read original story on: The Next Web
One step ahead of Facebook’s plan to put payment in its messaging app, Snapchat has teamed up with payment company Square to announced Snapcash, a new service that will allow users to send money to each other via Square’s system without leaving Snapchat. Now when a user signs up for Snapcash, they’ll be creating a Square Cash account at the same time. This partnership could be particularly helpful for Square, which has been trying to stay relevant in the face of the formidable Apple Pay.
For more information on the current state of mobile payment market, download and read our latest POV here.
Here’s the newest budding “trend” in the tech industry: when your app gets hacked and users’ privacy compromised as a result, don’t take the blame, but point your finger at an incompetent third-party application for its failure. In the span of one week, both Snapchat and Dropbox have resorted to this tactic after news of major security breaches broke. Snapchat is specifically naming Snapsaved.com as the leak source, while Dropbox vaguely faults “several third-party apps”.
One troubling implication with this blaming game is that by choosing and trusting poorly secured third-party application with their personal data, the users have no one but themselves to blame. Snapchat even specifically noted in a statement that “Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely”.
But still, the truth remains that Snapchat and alike could at least take partial blame for not managing their APIs and monitoring third-party services better. It is common practice for big-league social services like Twitter and Facebook to develop official APIs for better control over third-party apps, yet neither Snapchat nor Dropbox has released one. With more users turning to third-party apps for features unavailable in the main app, cloud-based services like these are in need of better regulation over their APIs. Resorting to a clause buried deeply inside a lengthy Terms of Use is not going to help eliminate the security concerns, and it is our hope that such “trend” will not catch on.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Snapchat is planning to broaden its offerings with video clips, news articles, and ads. It is reportedly in talks with advertisers and media companies about a service called “Snapchat Discovery” that would support such content.
Such support is certainly nothing new for messaging apps: Kik, for example, has been partnering with advertisers to run campaigns on its multimedia platform for a while now. Before Snapchat can capitalize on its estimated 50 million active users, however, some reliable measurements are needed.
In light of the surprising success of Yo, could a new messaging app with gamified features stand out from the crowd? That’s the question Shotclock is out to answer. At first glance, it might seem like a Snapchat copycat, with its self-destructing messages and one-tap-to-send interface. But its unique clocking system adds a twist: the time the ephemeral messages exist is proportionally linked to the “likes” and “shares” they get. Essentially a quantified popularity contest, Shotclock allows the messages with best content to last the longest and therefore gain maximal exposure.
Is a messaging app that let users send evaporating photos and videos really worth 10 billion dollars? This is the question that got the industry wondering when news broke earlier today that Snapchat is currently in funding talks with an array of investors, notably including China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba. And this round of financing has reportedly placed an enormous $10 billion value on the company. Whether the evaluation is justified or not, this funding round would to an interesting one to follow, especially with Tencent, Alibaba’s No.1 competitor in China, being a covet investor in Snapchat.
No longer satisfied with merely being a photo-sharing social network with pretty filters, Instagram is moving in on the ephemeral messaging territory currently dominated by Snapchat. Selecting Singapore, New Zealand and South Africa as the three initial test markets, Instagram is looking to work out the kinks before pushing for a domestic launch in the States.
For now, Bolt seems to lack a unique feature that would set it apart from the myriad of other “speed-first” messaging apps currently on the market. Even Facebook, who owns Instagram, already have a similar messaging app Slingshot, whose fate now looks troubling with Bolt entering the picture. Still, given that messaging apps are the new leading force of social platforms, it makes sense for Instagram to at least take a bolted shot at this for Facebook.
In Forbes’s detailed profile on Snapchat celebrity Shaun McBride, one important phenomenon almost slips through: with Vine “sort of plateauing” after a year and a half, video creators and brands are now looking to a matured Snapchat for new opportunities. No longer just an ephemeral picture sharing app, Snapchat has caught considerable attention from marketers with its new Snapchat Stories feature that allows the messages, be it video or pictures, to stay on for 24 hours. Several big stars on Vine have reportedly been branching out to Snapchat, looking to catch on the next trend to stay relevant. Overall, it is clear to see that the intimate, personal appeal of messaging apps gives them a crucial edge over the old-fashioned social media platforms. And staying ahead of trend seems to be the moral of the story here.
