Snapchat isn’t the most obvious place you would head to for your daily fix of headlines. But that might soon change. Snapchat is about to become a service for disappearing videos, news articles and ads.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the startup has been talking with advertisers and media companies about a service called “Snapchat Discovery” that would show content and ads to Snapchat users. Presumably, this would work in the same way that Snapchat currently works with images: everything vanishes the moment you lift up your finger from the screen.
The service is set to launch in November. Whether it will be a standalone app or integrated into the main Snapchat app is still unclear.
The product would let users read daily editions of publications as well as watch video clips of TV shows or movies by holding down a finger on the screen, like they do with photos and other messages on the app before disappearing.
There’s no doubt about it: Snapchat needs to make money and if this plan works out, it would be the company’s first revenue stream.
Meanwhile, disappearing news on Snapchat isn’t exactly a new idea. [The Wall Street Journal]