Dive Brief:

• A Time Inc. press release announced that Entertainment Weekly and Essence will join People on Snapchat’s Discover portal. EW and Essence will both have weekly editions expected to launch in the coming weeks.
• Time Inc. was an original Discover publisher partner and People currently has a daily edition on the portal. 
• Snapchat has a roster of publisher partners that includes the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail, CNN, Now This News, Mitu, Brother, Cosmo, Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Comedy Central, Mashable, Refinery29, Tastemade, The Economist, MTV, Complex, Vogue, Sweet and the Food Network.

Dive Insight:

For publishers, the Discover portal offers access to Snapchat’s user base that skews toward younger demographics. The fact that Time Inc. is bringing additional titles to the platform suggests its early efforts with People have proven beneficial. Publishers are looking for ways to engage mobile consumers, who spend a lot of time consuming content on their devices but aren't necessarily going to titles' dedicated web sites. 

Time Inc.'s Will Lee, Digital Director, Celebrity, Entertainment and Sports Groups, said in the press release that the Discover experience has been “incredibly rewarding and energizing for our audiences and for our editorial teams” and part of pursuing new storytelling on new platforms for new audiences.

For Snapchat, adding two more Time Inc. publications gives the Discover portal additional established brands with specific audience appeal. The platform also recently brought on the New York Times. Snapchat has long shuffled and sorted the publishers on Discover, which has been seen as valuable space on the social media app.

It's likely no coincidence that Snapchat is adding more titles to the portal right before the expected IPO of parent company Snap Inc. next month as having allegiances with big publishing brands could help boost the perceived value of Snapchat for investors. The app, while growing quickly, is still a relative newcomer and there are questions as to if it can maintain the growth or will fall victim to stagnating growth like Twitter has. Big publishing titles like EW and People are known entities to publishers.