There’s just no stopping Snapchat’s expansion into the world of publishing. While the company took a big step towards achieving its goal of becoming a serious publishing platform earlier this year with the addition of its Discover feature, it was held back by the fact that people weren’t able to share the content they found. Fortunately, that’s going to change very soon as Snapchat will be allowing users to send the content they find to anyone in their contacts.
Snapchat took a step towards becoming a serious publishing platform in January with its Discover feature. The problem is, a big part of online publishing is being able to share content with your friends, which Discover doesn’t let you do. That’s changing soon with an update to the iOS and Android apps. According to TechCrunch, you’ll soon be able to tap and hold on a Discover photo or video to send it to your friends. In true Snapchat fashion, you can even add drawings or text to the media before sharing, and the snaps will include a “Sent via Discover” button to help users easily access the content. It’s a small update but could make Discover a lot more useful. Snapchat wants to publish more original content, but its reach is limited without integrated sharing functionality. Previously, you had to direct them to the proper Discover channel manually, which is just clumsy when netizens are used to easily accessible share icons. Now you don’t always have to discover content yourself – your friends can do that for you. That said, Snapchat is still limiting itself by not allowing you share features on other social platforms like Facebook or WhatsApp, but it’s at least a step in the right direction.
