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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

When Snapchat is all grown up

On Tuesday, Snapchat, the world leader of making selfies and sexts disappear, ?debuted a new service called Discover that will let other companies publish ?multimedia content via ?the app. Eleven channels are available at the outset of the ?service, including CNN, ESPN, Vice, Comedy Central and Yahoo News. Why is Snapchat doing this?

Two reasons: to advertise and to build its image.

No longer is Snapchat just for kids. They have CNN now, and kids don’t care about CNN. They’re becoming a ?serious multimedia ?company.

In 2013, they turned down an offer from Facebook for a $3 billion acquisition.

That’s a lot of money to pass up, especially for a ?company as young as ?Snapchat. And especially for a ?company that wasn’t making any revenue.

This was a smart move for the service. I checked out Discover, and it’s actually kind of cool.

Accessing it is a little ?clumsy, but once you’re in, you can tap on any one of the 11 channels to see whatever content you wish, from ?Cosmopolitan to National Geographic to Vice. I tapped on the CNN logo and was greeted by a short clip about the blizzard in the Northeast.

I swiped right and glossed an article about how Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a ?Facebook page.

Bummer.

I swiped right a few more times and saw the most important thing about the service: an ?advertisement. But getting users to ?actually make use of Discover will be tricky.

It offered nothing that I couldn’t get from my ?Facebook newsfeed or by ?visiting the websites of my ?favorite news sources. I doubt I will use it very ?often, if at all.

Snapchat has a lot of ?potential here. However, they have to give users a reason to dig through the app to actually get to ?Discover.

As of now, it’s kind of ?gimmicky. But I like the ?direction they’re going in.

I never really used the app in the first place so I’m not ?exactly the target audience. But who knows, maybe it’ll catch on with power ?users.

I usually get a lot of news from Facebook and Twitter by ?following or liking the ?pages of news sources I enjoy ?visiting. And there is absolutely no reason why Snapchat can’t get into the game, too.

It’s about time they grow up a little and realize the potential they have in playing a game of business and in ?making some revenue. But that’s the trend with social networks. They build up a user base for a couple years by being really cool and innovative without ads, then sell out and make a boatload of cash.

Honestly, it’s not a bad business method. You’ve all seen “The Social Network,” so you know how it goes.

I hear a sequel is in the works.

This time it’s going to be about Snapchat.

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