Snapchat will open ‘Our Stories’ content to publishers like CNN

For all of Snapchat’s current woes, one of its greatest strengths continues to be its content. 

Whether it’s music festivals, sporting events, catastrophic storms, or other breaking news events, Snapchat has set itself apart from its peers due to its unique ability to provide a first-person view into what’s happening around the world. 

The challenge for Snap, though, has been that all that content isn’t always easily discoverable outside of the confines of its app. But that’s beginning to change.

Now, Snapchat has enlisted an array of publisher partners to help make sure its user-generated content reaches the largest possible audience. The company announced a new program that will allow publishers to curate their own “Our Stories” using publicly submitted Snapchat content. Over the next few weeks, these Stories will appear in the app’s Discover section and are also viewable on the web. 

The program, of which initial partners include NBC, Vice, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Mic, and Telemundo, among others, marks a significant expansion of Snapchat’s Our Stories product, which up until now has been curated by Snap employees. 

For publishers, Snapchat content could prove to be a valuable resource. Though Snapchat videos have gone viral in the past, it hasn’t always been easy for media companies to access the content in the way that they can with Twitter and other social media platforms. By opening up Snapchat’s public-facing content to them, these publishers can now take advantage of Snapchat in a much more meaningful way.

For Snap, which has been struggling with user growth in the wake of a disastrous redesign, the new partnerships will help ensure that its content will be seen by more people, even if it’s outside of the Snapchat app. 

The new program also opens up a new revenue source for both Snap and its publisher partners. Snap plans to run ads in the new Our Stories and will share revenue with the publishers, much like it does in Discover. 

So while it likely won’t solve Snapchat’s user growth problem (at least, not anytime soon), the new partnerships are nonetheless an important expansion of Snap’s mission to put Stories Everywhere. And, more importantly, it shows that the company is willing to double down on its greatest strengths.