Snapchat is about to get even more addictive thanks to a few new features they’re rolling out on the app, presumably to compete with other rabbit-hole social media platforms like Twitter and Youtube.
As TechCrunch reports, no longer will individual snaps be limited to an audience of just people who follow you. In January, Snapchat opened to everyone the ability to submit to Our Story. Now anyone anywhere can post at any time — people in certain locations or at big events (concerts, professional sporting events, etc.), or during special times like holidays. This promptly meant your Snapchat began pulling in way more content than you could digest. The solution: Snapchat recently launched the Search for Stories function to shuffle through all the content submitted to Our Stories.
Per TechCrunch, here’s a bunch of useful metaphors to help explain:
Previously, you could think of Snapchat like a television with the Stories of people you follow as different cable channels. Discover and Snapchat Shows were like HBO, offering extra premium content. All you could watch was what these channels aired. If you flipped through all the channels and still weren’t satisfied, you were out of luck.
Search is like having the world’s biggest Blockbuster video rental spot open up next door. Suddenly you can browse a near-endless array of content in all sorts of categories, from popular mainstream releases to weird niche foreign films. New films arrive faster than you can watch them, so there’s always something you haven’t seen available.
For the biggest Snapchat fans, this uncaps their potential engagement time. You can now do around-the-clock movie marathons.
So, basically, your snaps can now be discovered more easily and lumped into categories with similar snaps from other users. This means endless content for anyone looking to get distracted by their phone for a few hours instead of continuing work on the next great American novel. (That’s what I’m doing when I’m not looking at Snapchap.)
Not only that, but some snaps will last longer than 24 hours. This could mean big things for anyone looking to build a stronger following on the app.
As of right now, Snapchat’s expansion feels like really good news for women in cam. These features are part of an effort to create more engagement time on the app, allowing for a greater chance of your account being discovered. Instead of working so hard to tell people to follow you on the app, there is now more possibility for them to find you organically — and we all know that organic, real followers are worth their weight in gold.
Hopefully, Snapchat’s categories will include adult content — or at least suggestive (*wink, wink*) content — and the community of sex and sex-related workers relying on Snapchat already. A searchable category of adult content would boost visibility and hopefully do wonders for your following. As of now, Snapchat is only testing the search function in select cities and has not commented on specifics. Let’s hope they do soon, though, and that Snapchat users everywhere will see what all this is about.
Oh god, I’m about to get a lot more addicted to my damn phone.
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Sonia Stevens is a writer-comedian who picks apart the absurdities women face daily. Email her at Sonia.Stevens@ynotcam.com.
