Snap's Snapchat is struggling. In an effort to fight back its slow growth, it introduces a redesigned mobile app with the ability to share Stories.
Here, users can share their Stories to those people outside of Snapchat's app. What this means, Snapchat can share Stories to their linked social media accounts or through text, or email with a link to a webpage where people who don't have the app can view the message.
To view these Stories on the web, Snap is launching a desktop web viewer that accessible over at Snapchat.com. The company said that users in Australia and Canada, both of which have broader access to the redesigned app, can start sharing their Stories starting January 23rd, 2018.
Because Snapchat's Story has a long heritage within the company's services, Snap is careful to clarify that the share option only works for three varieties of public Stories:
- Official Stories that are created by verified Snapchat accounts, like those of media, celebrities and others.
- Our Stories which are collaborative, crowdsourced Stories that allows users to contribute snaps to a shared group for anyone to view.
- Search Stories which are public, user-generated snaps by searching keywords.
According to a spokesman for Snapchat:
"With the launch of the new Story sharing feature, we’re excited that Snapchatters will now be able to share even more of those Stories with friends and family outside of Snapchat."
With Facebook and its properties are blatantly copying Snapchat, Snap has been struggling with poor user growth and slumping stock price.
CEO Evan Spiegel has responded with measures to keep Snapchat agile, and by introducing little tweaks here and there. And most prominently, the massive redesign effort the company underwent in 2017.
All that with a goal to make Snapchat easier to use and also attract more people to sign up.
And here, by introducing the ability to share Stories to people that aren't using Snapchat - even in the limited form - it's clear that Spiegel's aim is to go beyond the constraints of apps and mobile by making Snapchat a bit more social and flexible.
Related: Snapchat Introduces Link Sharing From Other Apps, And Adds 'Ghost Mode' Feature