Dive Brief:
- Snapchat is launching a “Memories” feature that allows users to save their Snaps, the company said in a blog post.
- Within its new Memories feature, Snapchat has four tabs: Snaps, Stories, Camera Roll, and My Eyes Only. Camera Roll allows users to access their phone's camera roll while My Eyes Only provides a password-protected place for users to keep images and videos private.
- Snapchat says it will back up the content in Memories to its servers, except for the images and video in your Camera Roll. The Memories feature will roll out "selectively" over the next month or so. Users will receive a Chat from Snapchat when Memories are ready for them.
Dive Insight:
While Snapchat was originally designed as a way to share photos and video that would disappear after 10 seconds, its latest feature fundamentally changes the ephemeral nature of the app.
It will be interesting to watch how Snapchat’s core users react to the new feature, as well as ongoing efforts to become more marketer-friendly. The Memories feature comes as Snapchat is looking to attract advertisers and is gaining an older, more mainstream audience.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, the trend mirrors Facebook's growth. Facebook started as a social network for college students but eventually evolved into a platform for all ages with well over 1 billion monthly active users. But such growth could come with a trade-off—alienating its original core user base of teens.
For marketers, the app's interface historically has been very difficult to use. Snapchat has not offered most of the bells and whistles brands are accustomed to with social media platforms, such as segmentable targeting for ad buys and detailed performance measurement.
But the pieces of Snapchat's monetization strategy are starting to come together: Snapchat recently launched an API for ad buying that dramatically reduced the price of entry for advertisers to reach its users. Snapchat counts about 150 million daily active users, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
